


Inktober 2019 - The Cloudbreaker Escapades

by SuperStranger



Category: Pathfinder (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Fantasy, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Humor, Inktober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2020-11-10 17:02:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 33,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20855225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuperStranger/pseuds/SuperStranger
Summary: Thirty-one prompts. A tavern full of five ne'er-do-well adventurers. What could go wrong?





	1. Ring

**Author's Note:**

> A collection of short snippets inspired by the inktober prompt list of 2019, starring my Pathfinder group's characters. They take place in the fringes of the sprawling, diverse city of Dragmiria, in a ramshackle inn ran by a mysterious and powerful figure - Emile, the barkeep.
> 
> Featuring: Icarus, as the feisty demon-hunting wyvaran gunslinger; Glamour, as the wholesomely punk vampire magus; Arel, as the voice-of-reason aquatic elf wizard; Illya, as the sensible noble air druid sylph; and Hana, as the ever-curious steampunk aasimar summoner.

_Ring._

Another plate of chicken wings slides onto the counter when Icarus rings the shiny brass bell. Emile effortlessly produces the dish, seemingly from nowhere. Icarus places his finished plate on top of the stack to his right, the leftover bones of the other five dozen wings creating a haphazard, tilting tower of meat scraps and dishware. He digs into the sixth plate ravenously.

Arel enters the inn, unnoticed by the wyvaran. Illya, Hana, and Glamour are watching from the table across the small room.

“What is he-” Arel is cut off by Glamour, who quietly shushes him.

“He's been going like this for fifteen minutes. He said he had to eat all the wings he missed out on while he was in the fey.”

“But it's only been two days.”

“Not to him, it hasn't,” Hana pipes up. “From his point of view, he's missed out on nearly – what did he say – two hundred wings?”

“Yes, I believe so,” Illya confirms.

“Is that... is that physically possible? Can he eat that many?” Arel asks, a bit dumbfounded.

Glamour shrugs. “Dunno. Guess we'll see.”

Arel takes a seat beside the others as they all look on, watching Icarus tear through wings and flats, chicken and gristle, bone and flesh.  _Ring_. Another plate, the seventh one. _Ring._ An eighth. _Ring._ A ninth. Surely, he can't keep going. 

The plates stack up and pile high, reaching nearly three feet. With a swift motion, Emile pushes them off to the side, making just enough room for Icarus to begin building another pile.

_Ring._ Ten. _Ring. _ An eleventh plate. A different reaction plays across each of the onlookers' faces. Arel simply seems confused. Glamour intensely looks on, like watching a circus performance. Revulsion and just a hint of fascination glints behind Illya's eyes, and a faint smile plays across Hana's mouth, silently egging Icarus on.

__

The intervals between the plates grow longer. _Ring_. A twelfth, began with less gusto and finished with a heavy swallow. _Ring_. The thirteenth arrives, and Icarus' pace slows to half, every other bite accompanied by a heave or a groan.

__

He finishes the plate, and hesitates to call the fourteenth. The room had grown eerily quiet over the last few minutes, save for Icarus's quiet, labored breathes. Subconsciously, all four audience members had inched forward, their postures all bent in his direction expectedly, wondering what would happen next.

__

Icarus falls to the floor with a uproar, taking the brass bell, every dirty plate, and a shower of gnawed chicken bones with him. He lays sprawled out on the stone floor, covered with dishes and meat debris. Hana laughs out loud (he was so close!), Glamour grins (I knew he couldn't do it), and Illya just sighs a long, reproachful sigh. Arel gets up and goes to help Icarus off the floor, but he stops halfway.

__

The bell had fallen beside Icarus on the floor, and his hand still hovered over it.

__

_Ring._

__

__

__


	2. Mindless

_Thock, thock, thock, thock, thock._

Icarus stares off into the distance, stabbing a knife between his fingers, the blade sinking into the wooden table over and over. The blade dances between the spaces of each of his outstretched fingers in a rhythmic pattern, narrowly missing the skin each time. His eyes wander blankly, his calloused hands acting purely on muscle memory.

Glamour wanders in and spies Icarus in the act. “What the heck are you doing?”

Barely noticing the sounds, Icarus takes a second to pause, his eyes focusing on the vampire in front of him. “Oh, I'm just thinking. Got a lot on my mind.”

Glamour points to the knife. “I mean, why are you trying to stab your hand?”

Icarus laughs. “Oh, it's a thing we used to do on the Shattered Moon. It's a pirate thing, I guess. Everyone did it to show they were tough, not afraid of taking a little risk, getting a little cut up. It's just a habit now. Doing something mindless with my hands helps me focus.”

“Hey, I bet I could do that,” Glamour says, sitting beside him. “Show me.”

Icarus hands him a knife with the hilt towards him. “You wanna be careful the first few times you do it. You can hurt yourself, obviously. Takes some time to get good.” Icarus spreads his left hand's fingers wide against the table and grips his own knife in a fist, blade down. Glamour mimics the position, hands shaking a little bit. “Okay, you wanna ease up, relax. The more jittery you are, the harder it's gonna be. Just take a deep breath and go slow. Look, I'll show you.” Icarus begins his methodical knife game again, slower this time.

Glamour takes a deep breath, but it only increases his anxiety. His palms are sweaty, and he swallows nervously. Long seconds go by and Glamour is still readied, eyes sharply fixed on the small space between his thumb and index finger.

“You know, maybe this isn't a great idea after all,” Icarus says, still slowly but firmly stabbing his own knife through each of the spaces between his hand.

“No,” Glamour barks, “I can do it.”

Just then, Arel walks in from outside. “Hey Glamour, have you seen WOAH WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

Glamour shouts and plunges the knife into the table. It immediately erupts into a gout of hot flames, catching the wooden table on fire in an instant. Icarus yells in surprise, and his own knife plunges into the meat of his hand, sticking it to the table. He yowls in pain.

“What the hell was that?” Icarus yells.

“Pool strike!” Glamour yells, jumping up away from the quickly burning table. “It's a magus thing, I was just nervous I-” 

“I don't care, just put out the fire,” Icarus screams, trying to remove the knife still sticking his hand to the table.

Arel comes to his senses. “Uh, here!” A rush of chilled air issues forth from his hands, a spray of ice somewhat quelling the flames, and freezing the struggling Icarus solidly to the table.

Illya crashes through the door from her room. “What in the world is happening in here?” She sees Glamour jumping around, brandishing a knife, Arel shooting streams of chilled arcane energy towards a rising fire, and Icarus at the center of it all, his left hand stuck to the table with iron and ice. “Icarus, why-”

“Just do something, please! I'm in a lot of pain!”

Without a thought, Illya tries to cure Icarus's hand, and a green healing energy pulses outward towards him.

He cries out with a high pitched shrill. “Okay, now my hand just healed  _around_ the knife and it's  **still** stuck to the table!”

As the commotion intensifies, Hana wanders in with a yawn. She watches the scene unfold with a disinterested glance for a few seconds, and then calmly takes a seat at the bar. She throws a gold coin onto the counter. “Sorry, Emile. This should cover the cost of the new table.  _ Again." _


	3. Bait

Illya hums softly to herself, out on a walk around a calm wooded area near the inn, enjoying the scenery. The outskirts of Dragmiria were not as developed as the city farther in, so the woods here are able to sprawl out naturally, growing into an idyllic bastion of repose away from the hustle and bustle of the city. It’s a great place to get away and clear your head. Hearing a rustle, she looks around, and is pleased to see Arel. He’s rooting through the trees, scanning the ground, looking a bit anxious. She calls to him and, relieved, quickly jogs over.

“Hey Illya, great timing. Have you seen Tempest around? I let her roam out here sometimes, but she’s been out for a few hours and I’m getting worried.”

“Your otter? No, not lately,” she says with a genuine affect of concern. “She’s a familiar, yes? Don’t you have some sort of link with her?”  


Arel scratches his head sheepishly. “Yeah, but it’s only a mile. These woods are pretty big, you know? I don’t think she’s in trouble or anything, but I’d like to see her back before sundown, just in case."

“Yes, I can understand your worry. Is there anything I can do? I have some skills in tracking, myself.”

“Yeah, that would help a lot.” Arel thinks for a moment. “Maybe some kind of bait would work? To lure her out. I don’t suppose you have any fish, but maybe we can find some berries around here. She loves those.”

“Oh, no need,” Illya replies. She cups her hands, and a golden light fills them, producing a handful of small, perfectly round reddish-purple berries. “These are goodberries. They’re extremely nutritious, very filling, and most importantly, quite tasty. Here,” she hands Arel half of the berries. “If these don’t work, I am not sure what will.”

Arel grins, some tension lifting from his body. “Thanks Illya. That’s a big help.”

Illya waves a hand. “Don’t mention it, really. I just want Tempest to come home safe.”

Later, at the inn, Arel creeps back in. The sun had set already, and the amber glow of daylight shone its last few beams into the modest windows. Glamour waited for him there, ready to see his friend back safe.

“I heard from Illya. Is Tempest back? I was worried about her. And you too, duh.”

Out from Arel’s robes, Tempest sticks her tiny head out and looks around the room, hearing her name. “Yeah, don’t worry, she’s okay. But, here,” Arel produces a single goodberry from the supply that Illya had made. “You  _ gotta _ try this. It’s the best thing I’ve ever eaten.”

Glamour purses his lips and narrows his eyes at the single berry. “You find this in the woods?” he asks, skeptical.

“No, Illya made it. She said it was a ‘goodberry’. Just try it, I saved it for you.”

Humoring Arel, Glamour smiles and plucks the berry, popping it in his mouth. His grin melts away as he chews, changing his expression to one of misty-eyed disbelief. “Oh. Wow. That’s  _ good." _

“I know, right? Too bad we can’t get these all the time.”

Glamour puts up a finger. “Wait. Maybe we can.” A mischievous grin spreads across his face, revealing his pointed fangs.

The next morning Arel and Glamour are gathered together at the central table, speaking quickly to each other. Illya greets them, stepping out from her room. “Oh, good morning, you two. Did you have any luck finding Tempest yesterday?”

Arel gets out of his chair a bit too quickly. “Yes- uh, no, I mean. Still don’t know where she ran off to,” he says, laughing nervously.

Glamour stands beside him, nudging him. “Yeah, it sucks, yo. Arel said you had some berries that could help us out?”

“Oh, sure. It’s the least I can do.” Illya notices Arel acting a bit weird. Something is off. But it would be rude not to help a friend in need, right? Without hesitating, she produces two full handfuls of goodberries, handing one to Glamour and the other to Arel.

“Thanks,” Arel says sheepishly. “We’ll go out and look for her right away.”

“Yes, of course,” Illya responds. “I hope she returns quickly.”

Barely a second passes before Illya finishes her sentence, and the nimble otter darts out of Arel’s spacious robes, perches on his arm, and shoves three goodberries in her mouth. She takes a long look at Illya, and shoots back into his robes once again, as if nothing had happened.

Illya looks Arel up and down, a bit dumbfounded. “…was that Tempest?”

Arel is paralyzed, face frozen in a terrible poker face. “Well, uh, you see-“

Glamour grabs Arel by the scruff, cutting him off and dragging him along as he bolts towards the door. “Book it!”

Within seconds, the two of them – three of them, including Tempest – vanishes from Illya’s sight. She’s left standing in the common room by herself, hands still outstretched from the casting of her spell.

“Oh. Well then,” she says quietly. “They could have just asked.”


	4. Freeze

“Hey, what's up?” Icarus asks. Glamour is sitting at the table in the common room. Arel is bent over him, casting a spell. Hana is asleep across from them, buried in books, as she often is

“Not much,” Glamour replies. “Just got cursed by this weird amulet and now I can't move my legs. How 'bout you?”

“Wait, run that by me again?” Icarus asks.

“Glamour, you have to stay still if you want me to dispel this,” Arel says, his magic emitting a dull hum and a faint blue light.

“But we've been here for three hours, I'm getting boooored.”

“Maybe you'll learn not to put on random amulets before you know what they do, then.”

Icarus steps up to examine the amulet, careful not to get in Arel's way. It's made of a silver metal, round with a pair of pointed edges sticking upwards at the sides. A thin, brightly shining blue gem is inlaid in the center. “Where did you even find something like this anyway? Looks fancy. I don't remember anyone picking up an amulet like this while we were out.”

Arel shakes his head. “Glamour has been getting more interested in spellcraft recently, so we stopped at a low-level magic item store today. We _were_ just supposed to be identifying it, but _someone_ here couldn't wait.”

“You can't blame me,” Glamour shoots back. “Look at it! It's so cool, I had to see what it looked like on me. And the lady at the counter said it was called the 'Amulet of the Frozen Souls'. Like, it's just _begging_ to be worn by somebody as cool as me.”

“Well apparently it's the 'Amulet of the Frozen Soles', because you haven't been able to move your feet since you put it on.”

“Just take it off,” Icarus suggests. “What's the worst that can happen?”

“I don't know what the worst thing that can happen, and that's what scares me.” Arel pauses for a second to rest his stiff hands, flexing them. “Cursed items are no joke. They only happen because someone was careless – or worse, intentionally malicious. They're tiny balls of unpredictable energy.”

“Well then,” Icarus says, sighing. “Let's just take it back to the person who sold it to you. Make them sort it out, huh?”

Arel shakes his head. “Glamour can't move though. That's, uh, kind of the main problem.”

Icarus rolls up his sleeves. “Then I guess we'll just have to move him ourselves, won't we?”

“Hey, wait!” Arel stops Icarus before he comes into contact with Glamour, laying a firm hand on his arm. “If somebody touches the person who wears the amulet they'll-”

“Don't worry, I'll go see the manager and we'll all have this sorted out in a minute, okay?” Before Arel can raise another objection, Icarus touches Glamour's shoulder. Arel yells out half a choked cry before Icarus and Glamour's entire bodies freeze solidly in place. Arel, hand still in contact with Icarus's arm, is also affected by the curse of the amulet, and he too is paralyzed exactly as he is, wearing a panicked expression. Alongside the grinning Icarus and the bored Glamour, the scene is like a beautiful, odd renaissance painting.

Hana raises herself up, jostled awake by Arel's cut off scream, books tumbling off her. “Hmm. That didn't turn out as well as I was expecting.”

One of the room doors creak open, Illya sticking her head out. “I heard screaming again,” she says flatly. “What do I have to do to get some peace and quiet around here lately?”

Sitting, Hana buries her head in a book again. Her muffled voice comes through. “These three got cursed,” she says, pointing to the trio. "We should probably help them out. I think Arel's almost done dispelling it.”

Illya thinks to herself before answering.“You know, there's a nice cafe that just opened up in the market district that I've been meaning to check out. Would you like to come along?”


	5. Build

In the small hours of the morning, Icarus is still awake, tinkering with his pistol. Bits of metal and fine tools are spread out across the table, covering nearly every inch. He works under the soft, flickering light of a few candles, nearly burnt to the wicks.

Quietly, Hana comes through the front door. Icarus acknowledges this, but doesn't look up. “Shouldn't you be sleeping this late at night?” he asks.

She shrugs. “I sleep when I feel like it. I'd ask you the same question though.”

He blinks, trying to focus his tired eyes, and continues with his work. “Couldn't sleep. Figured I'd poke at my old gun for a while. I haven't gotten a lot of use out of it since I found Garth's pistol. Magical weapons don't need nearly as much upkeep, it turns out.”

Hana takes a seat beside Icarus, feasting her eyes on the small mechanical parts and various implements. “Looks neat. Mind if I take a crack at it?”

To be fair, it was very early in the morning, and Icarus really did want to be getting to sleep. “Yeah, you know what? Knock yourself out,” he tells her, trying to rub the red out of his eyes. He gets up and motions to the whole table. “Just try not to blow anything up while I'm alseep, okay?”

With a greedy look, Hana sits herself down and picks up where Icarus left off, immediately trying to familiarize herself with every shape, memorizing all the pieces to the intricate jigsaw puzzle laid out in front of her. “No promises.” Her mind is already somewhere else.

“Eh, good enough.” Icarus trots off to bed, the door closing quietly behind him with a click.

* * *

Icarus awakes to a frazzled Hana looming above his bed, looking positively giddy.

“Ah! What- how did you get in here?”

“You forgot to lock your door. Not important. Gotta see. Finished.”

Icarus rubs his head, not happy about all the noise so early in the morning. Dawn had barely started to break. It was six, maybe six-thirty. “Finished what?”

Hana is already gone, sped off into the common room. Not having much choice, Icarus rises from bed and marches himself after her.

If it's possible, the table is even messier than he'd left it. He isn't sure how or why, but Hana had evidently brought her own materials to this endeavor, and the table now has a number of burn marks and deep grooves that he's fairly sure hadn't been present when he left it a few hours ago.

The finished piece sits in the very center of the table. He recognizes it as his old pistol – or, what once was his old pistol. The barrel has been enlarged and extended, the usual brass color now replaced with a dull blue-grey metal of Hana's design. It looks bulky and unwieldy. To support the new extension, the hammer and the cylinder mechanisms had either been restructured or totally stripped and built again from the ground up. Two large gear cranks are welded to either side. In total, it's nearly twice the size it had been. Probably won't even it in his holster any more.

“What did you do?” He picks it up and turns it in his hands, trying to understand how it was even supposed to work.

“Do you want to find out?” Hana says hungrily.

Hana and Icarus take the new toy out behind the inn, setting up a circular wooden target in front of the backside of the building. They step back twenty feet away from it, and Icarus steadies it at the target.

“Okay,” Hana says, barely containing herself. “It's probably gonna list a little to the left, so you're gonna want to compensate for that. Keep your arms straight; this baby should kick like a mule.”

“You don't gotta lecture me, kid. I know how to shoot a gun.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Icarus fires. To his surprise, the entire barrel comes completely off the front of the gun. It streaks forth, and small jet of flame seems to propel it forward from its base. It speeds toward the target, but then hitches and veers away wildly at the last moment, angling sharply upward in an errant corkscrew. It glides past the target completely and lands on the roof of the inn with a sputter and a fizz.

Both of them stand wordlessly, staring at the silent piece of metal resting on the top of the inn, the spectacle coming to a close.

“Well, it was a good try, but I think your invention is a bust,” Icarus says to Hana, tossing the pistol back to her.

She catches it with a thoughtful hum. “Well, maybe we can try it again. As long as the payload is still-”

**BOOM.**

The roof explodes in a fiery debris, lighting up the early morning sky with gunpowder and black smoke. Where the roof hasn't become a gaping hole, the edges are singed with glowing cinders.

Illya comes out of the building, her hands on her hips. She's not happy to be awake. “Put this out. Both of you are grounded.” She turns around. “I'm going back to bed.”


	6. Husky

Icarus pats his full stomach. “You know, for not having a kitchen in this place, Emile is a pretty good cook.”

The group is gathered around the usual meeting table, enjoying a rare communal meal. Empty plates and used cutlery adorn the table, practically licked clean.

“Hey hey, lookin' husky, Icarus,” Hana says, side-eyeing him.

He laughs. “Thanks!”

“Oh, I didn't mean 'husky' like 'strong'. I mean chunky.” She pauses. “Like, gettin' kinda fat.”

Icarus stops laughing, pounding the table. “Hey, just because we haven't put our lives in immediate danger in the last few days, it doesn't mean I'm getting soft. I've still got muscle.”

The wyvaran looks around the room, settling on Arel. “You! Come one, arm wrestle me. I promise I'll go easy on ya.”

“What? Right now?” Arel says, looking over his shoulder like Icarus could have been talking to anybody else. “Well, I just ate. So I uh, don't want to pull a muscle, right?” He desperately turns to Glamour for help. “That's how that works, right?”

Glamour steps up. “C'mon, me and you, let's go. I'll arm wrestle you.”

Icarus pumps his fists, getting fired up. “All right! I'll show you I'm not washed up. I still got it.”

They clear off a few plates, pushing them away haphazardly. The dishes threaten to careen over the table's side and crash against the floor, but Arel and Illya deftly prevent them from breaking, catching them before any damage can be done. Glamour and Icarus take positions on opposite sides of the table, staring each other down.

Hana raises one hand in the air between them. “Ready? Three, two, one, go!”

Icarus gets the upper hand at first, but just slightly. His reflexes are fast, but Glamour is no slouch either. Icarus starts strong, pushing Glamour's hand down to about halfway to the table, but Glamour builds up steam, overtaking Icarus's early lead. Slowly, Icarus loses the advantage, and gradually but surely, Glamour pushes his hand down onto the table with a heavy thud.

Glamour scoots his chair and leans back on it, not even fazed. “Good one, Icarus. You thought you were actually gonna win.”

Icarus messages his shoulder, a bit sore from the struggle. “Come on, that's not fair. You're a vampire, that gives you like, super strength or something.”

“Nah I think you're just a super _wimp_. Haha, up top.” Glamour raises his hand for a high five. Arel rolls his eyes and gives him one.

“Come on. Arel, you gotta give me one round at least.”

“Fine, one round,” Arel says, pulling up a chair. 

Hana gets into position. The Icarus and Arel lock eyes; Icarus with a grin, Arel with a grimace.

“Go!”

Both arms tense, fighting in a rigid stalemate. Arel's face contorts into an expression of exertion, not wanting to lose now that he's actually in the thick of it. They stay locked like that for ten seconds, fifteen, twenty. Their arms begin to shake, tiring from the pressure. As Arel's hand is about to give out, and it slowly backs up closer to the table, it abruptly pushes against Icarus's with renewed strength. Arel regains the lead easily, and it's over in a matter of seconds.

Arel heaves a sigh. Icarus beats the table. “I almost had you! You were on the brink!”

Glamour laughs and flashes his best friend a thumbs up. If Icarus was paying attention, he might have noticed Arel silently mouthing the words “unseen servant” to Glamour.

Illya laughs. “Looks like  _someone_ has been eating their goodberries.” Arel blushes.

In an act of desperation, Icarus points at her, still heaving from his last two bouts. “You! Illya, you gotta face me. I can  _not_ be the weakest person at this table. One more throw down to end it.”

Illya cocks a smile. “Well, if you insist, I suppose I have to.” She glides in front of Arel, who backs up to make room for her, and she gently rests her arm on the table, hand outstretched as if inviting Icarus to dance.

Determined, Icarus sits down again, grasping her arm. Hana counts down for the last time. “Three, two, one, go!”

The words barely escape Hana's mouth before Icarus's arm is slammed unceremoniously onto the table, barely putting up a fight. Illya shoots him a cocked grin, gets up, and walks out of the room.

“Hey hey, Illya,” Hana says. “Lookin' husky.”


	7. Enchanted

Glamour and Arel are seated at the common room table. In front of him, Glamour is focusing very hard on his favorite pair of heart-shaped sunglasses, magical energy built up in both his hands. He concentrates, sitting stock-still, determination in his eyes. Night had just fallen, and the glow of lamplight reflects warmly on his unblinking face.

Hana enters. “Hey guys. Woah, what's goin on with your glasses, Glamour?”

Arel puts a finger to his lips. “Don't break his focus. He's been on this for almost an hour now. Since our trip to the magic shop didn't go, uh, particularly well, Glamour decided to try enchanting something himself.”

“Ohhh, that's cool. Mind if I watch?” Hana scoots up a chair, not waiting for a reply. “Has he ever enchanted anything before?”

Arel shakes his head. “Nope, first time. I told him he should probably pick something with less sentimental value to him, but he insisted.”

When Arel looked back, Hana had found an apple from somewhere and started eating it. “So, what's the enchantment? Truesight? Magic missiles on command? Laser beams?” she asks between mouthfuls of chewed fruit.

Arel smiles in that worried way that he often does around Glamour's antics. “He uh, didn't tell me. But, he said it was a minor enchantment, so hopefully it shouldn't blow up if it goes wrong.”

“Yeah, hopefully.” A creaking noise from behind her diverts her attention. Illya enters the inn. “Oh, Illya, look. This should be exciting.”

“Enchanting something, huh?” Illya raises an eyebrow towards Arel. “Is it going to blow up?”

Hana laughs. “Arel says 'hopefully not'. So that's an almost guaranteed 'yes'.”

“Hm,” Illya and Arel both say at the same time, disapprovingly.

Another hour passes. Two hours. Hana, Illya, and even Icarus come and go, keeping Arel company, watching Glamour for a bit, but quickly losing interest. Arel stays by his friend's side the entire time. He lets Glamour know that he can take a break if he'd like, and that he doesn't need to do it all in one go, but Glamour persists, pushing through. Arel coaches him through the process, having a greater understanding of concrete magic theory than Glamour, but happy to see his friend succeed, and willing to lend a hand whenever he can.

As the final hours of the enchanting process wind down, sweat pouring from Glamour's forehead, the entire party gathers around the table, even in this late hour, eager to see what enhancements he's made. Or, alternatively, to stop whatever horrible consequence that Glamour has wrought upon them due to his over ambitious designs. Either way, nobody wanted to miss it. Even Emile, typically stoic and uninterested, had paused cleaning his glass and leaned in, just an inch.

Glamour heaves a sigh of relief as the magic dissipates. He looks exhausted. Arel hands him a drink of water, which he downs immediately.

“So?” Hana says. “What is it? I wanna see!”

“Alright,” Glamour says, flourishing his fingers. “But you might wanna stand back. You might be too intimidated by how rad this is.”

Glamour was halfway done his sentence before everybody had already backed up, each clinging to a separate wall of the room.

“Okay,” Arel says in a shaky voice. “Let's see it.”

Glamour picks up his glasses, spins them on his finger, and tosses them onto his face. He looks right at Icarus, who tenses reflexively. Glamour pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and they glint in the light. “Pretty cool, huh?”

“Wait, what?” Icarus asks, puzzled. “What did you do?” Each of the others step forward, relaxing a bit. Whatever it was, the effect didn't _seem_ explosive. At least, not yet.

Glamour once again pushes his glasses up his nose, once more giving off a shimmering sheen. “When I push my glasses up, they flash like this, not matter what the light level or the angle of the light is. Watch!” Using prestidigitation, he dims the lights in the room, the candles all dying down to a low, reddish glow. Sure enough, Glamour does another glasses push, and the light is just as bright, gleaming brilliantly. It shines for just an instant, outlining the shape of two hearts. “It'll even work in pitch darkness, you know.”

Icarus is the last one to peel himself off the wall. “What? All that effort, just for that? That's- it's-”

Arel puts a proud hand on Glamour's shoulder, smiling. “It's perfect.”


	8. Frail

In a patch of grass in front of the inn, Illya tends to a tiny plant. It's three or four inches tall, looking wilted and sickly. Arel and Hana both happen to be passing by together.

“Oh, I noticed that plant a few days ago. Did you plant that?” Arel asks.

“Yeah,” Illya admits. “You remember that bag of seeds we found? The one that Icarus tried to eat?”

“He _did_ eat one. Gave him a big stomachache.”

Hana laughs. “Did he? Wow, what an idiot." 

“Anyway,” Illya continues. “I tried planting one of the seeds, just to see. Usually, if I cast spells that affect plants, these seeds make my magic work anywhere, even if there aren't any plants around for me to work with.” She takes out a small handful of seeds. They're tiny, a bit like squashed sunflower seeds, but give off a reddish blue vitality. “These are the ones that usually come out of the bag, but a few days ago I found a seed that wasn't like the others.”

Hana perks up. “That sounds interesting. What did it look like?”

“Well, it was much bigger, maybe the size of a cherry pit. It was a reddish brown, and when I held it, it felt-” she trails off. “Well, I decided to plant it, whatever it was, but it hasn't been doing very well.” She looks sadly at the tiny plant, its thin green leaves turning a dry brown toward the edges.

Arel tilts his head. “Wait, what did you feel? When you held it?”

Illya waves her hand. “No, it's nothing. Never mind.”

“Hey, I wanna know now, too.” Hana says, arms crossed.

Illya becomes a bit flushed. “It might sound weird, but, I don't know how exactly to describe it. It was like- you know that feeling when you're distracted, and someone tries talking to you, and some part of your brain knows they're saying something, but you don't know what?”

Hana furrows her brow. “But the words are there somewhere, like you could remember them if you really really tried, right?”

Illya smiles. “Yeah, that's it. That's what it felt like.”

Hana closes her eyes. “Like someone was yelling something from a hundred miles away, and you could only hear the faintest noise, but you knew they were talking to you.” She nods. “Yeah, I think I get that.”

“Um, yeah. Something like that, I suppose.” Illya stops smiling. She puts a gentle hand on Hana's shoulder. “Sweetie, are you alright? You look... worried, maybe?”

Hana opens her eyes, surprised at the sudden physical contact. “Oh, yeah. No, I'm okay. I was just thinking.” She laughs, her whole demeanor brightening. “I do that a lot. Maybe too much.”

Arel clears his throat, causing the others to look at him. “Would you mind if I helped watch after it, Illya? I actually know a little bit about tending plants. I can check the acidity of the soil, and make sure it's getting the right amount of light and water.”

“Oh, me too,” Hana offers. “It looks like it isn't strong enough to hold up its own weight yet.” She points. “See how it's leaning off to the side? The stem isn't very thick. If we just made a little support stick for it to climb up, it would probably take to it.”

Illya smiles, touched by her friends' concern. “Wow, yeah! That would be great.” They all look down at the small, struggling plant, minds filled with ideas of how to save it, to make it grow up big and strong.

“I got it, Glamour!” Icarus is flying backwards towards them at a frightening speed, speeding along only a few inches off the ground, completely oblivious to the others' presences. His eyes are focused in the other direction, concentrating on a ball in the sky, its trajectory headed almost directly for the three of them. “I can catch it, watch!”

Illya sighs. She waves a hand and creates a slight downdraft, just enough to catch the tips of Icarus's wings. It's subtle, but enough to send him off balance. He wobbles and careens face first into the dirt, sliding a good ten feet before coming to a complete stop, about a foot away from the frail plant.

All three of them watch Icarus's ungraceful nosedive. Hana easily catches the ball, not even looking. “Maybe I'll build a fence around it too. You know, just to be safe.”

“Yeah,” says Arel. “Good call.”


	9. Swing

Glamour and Icarus face off, their swords drawn. Each of them are fixed on the other, neither willing to take their eyes off their enemy for an instant. Glamour's stance is flexible but controlled, one arm outstretched to keep Icarus at range, his pointed rapier evened parallel to the ground. Icarus grips his longsword with both hands, affording him shorter reach but greater power, looking to cut through Glamour's defenses. Both their weapons glow with an arcane force.

Icarus lunges forward, aiming for the neck, but Glamour gracefully parries with a sweeping upward motion. A loud clang of metal on metal rings out around them. He goes for a second strike, and Glamour uses the momentum to bring his own sword back around, the thin blade effortlessly stopping the much larger one.

“See Illya?” Glamour says calmly. “If you adjust your weight based on what the other guy does, it's super easy to respond to them. And then-” With blinding speed, he steps forward into Icarus's arm span, who tries to angle his sword down to block him, but he's too close. Icarus isn't fast enough, and Glamour lands and a piercing blow to the shoulder before Icarus can counter.

“Ow!” Icarus cries out, rubbing his arm. “Ease up, will ya? It's just a sparring match.”

Illya stands off to the side with a quill and a notepad, writing notes. Arel supervises, watching the two of them to make sure they don't _actually_ hurt themselves. Hana has brought out a lounging chair, and is watching the spectacle with a container of popcorn, occasionally yelling jeers at both fighters – “He's open!”, “Two silver on the lizard”, “Get 'em in the neck!”

Glamour grins. “I can't go easy on you. In the heat of a real battle, only one can remain.” He looks upward, off into the distance, his heart-shaped glasses glinting in the sunlight, cascades of scarlet rose petals showering around him. His cape flutters on an unseen breeze.

“Yeah, yeah. You're just lucky Arel put these barriers on our weapons,” Icarus says, running a finger harmlessly around the sharp edge of his blade, now glowing blue. “I'd outlast you in a real fight, make no mistake.”

Glamour turns to Arel. “Oh yeah, thanks for that. Smart use of mage armor to magically dull our weapons.”

Arel smiles. “It just came to me. It's nothing. This is all for Illya's benefit, anyway.”

Illya stops writing for a moment. “I  _do_ actually know how to use a sword, you know. Just because you've never seen me swing it, that doesn't mean I haven't been trained.” She taps the feathered edge of the quill pen on her nose thoughtfully. “But it has been helpful to study each of your sword techniques in a stable environment. When we aren't being attacked by giant demons and whatnot.”

Icarus lifts his weapon up onto his shoulder, trying to look as cool as Glamour, but not quite pulling it off. “So, you got everything you need? Or you want us to go another round?”

“Actually,” Illya says, “would you be able to show me the follow-through one more time? You said it was mostly about the wrist movement, but I'm not sure I quite get it.”

Icarus gives her a toothy grin. “Sure thing,” he says, hefting his blade. “Watch and learn.”

With one hand, Icarus whips his sword out in front of him in a wide arc. Glamour, still posing in mock contemplation, swiftly reacts, ducking under the attack. He springs up, lunging towards Icarus with his rapier, movements firm and precise. Icarus strikes with a few more one-handed chops, a flurry of blows coming from all angles. A few of them almost get through, but Glamour manages to stop them before they make contact.

Glamour takes a step back, his breathing quickened from the rapid-fire bout. He points his blade upward to the sky, using his other hand to fan out his cape in front of him, taunting the feisty wyvaran. Icarus falls for the bait, running straight for the obvious opening in Glamour's defenses. Glamour brings his sword back down, anticipating the attack and readying a swift riposte, but Icarus approaches him with the flat of his blade, battering him away. As Glamour tries to regain his posture, Icarus whips up a cloud of dirt, partially blinding Glamour. Icarus laughs, the underhanded tactic having exposed his opponent, and he steadies his longsword for a final, decisive strike-

A sharp pain ripples out from Icarus's collarbone, the dull, heavy impact causing his eyes to go blank and his knees to weaken. “Yeah, you got it,” he says, voice shaking, before he collapses on the ground.

Illya sheathes her glowing blue scimitar and smiles, looking down at the now unconscious Icarus. “That's for waking me up the other night.”


	10. Pattern

The bi-monthly market in Dragmiria has come around once again, and the whole group decides to take a trip into town to see what the commotion is all about. In the well-off sections of the city, every avenue is filled with stalls and vendors, hawking cheap baubles to tourists, rare trinkets to the magically initiated, and a plethora of cooked meats and vegetables to all who wander through. The sights and smells are just the pick-me-up that the Cloudbreakers have been looking for, and they dive into the festivities with reckless abandon, wandering through the city streets, darting here and there, unafraid to toss a bit of gold to whatever catches their fancy.

In the hustle and bustle, Icarus leans against a building, sticking to the shadows he manages to find, keeping his eyes on a particular boisterous facilitator of a high-stakes game of chance.

Hana finds him eventually. She tromps by, munching on a bit of meat on a stick. “Hey there Icarus. Find anything interesting?”

“Yeah,” he says, a bit startled to see her, broken from his intense concentration. “What’cha got there? Tasty?”

Hana shrugs and moves her meat stick toward Icarus. “Want a bite? It’s cockatrice apparently.”

Icarus laughs to himself. “No thanks, you can keep it. Anyway, see that game of five ball over there?” he asks her.

“Yeah, what about it?” The stall is manned by a brightly red skinned, purple haired tiefling with shining teal eyes. She’s talking to a potential customer. Looking closer, it seems to be Illya, accompanied shortly by Arel and Glamour. The tiefling controls the features of her face with practiced elegance; the slight raise of the eyebrow, the corner of a smile, the widening of the eyes, gesturing to all three of them. Her mouth never stops moving. These are all tricks to baffle and intrigue, to distract and mesmerize. Amazingly enough, it works. Glamour laughs and tosses her three gold pieces. Hana whistles. “Whew, that’s a bit steep for a carnie game.” The tiefling produces three cups, then a fourth, and then a fifth. She places a small black ball underneath the middle cup, and replaces the cup back on top. 

Around and around they go, the cups spinning this way and then that way. The cups move almost faster than the eye can follow, whirling and blending together. Hana and Icarus watch carefully from afar, trying to keep track.

Then, all at once, the cups stop. The tiefling gestures, asking the trio to pick one of them. They deliberate for a few moments.

“It’s the middle one, no doubt,” Icarus says to Hana, who’d lost track of the ball near the start of the whirling dervish act. “It’s thirty gold to the one who can guess it correctly.”

“For a one-in-five chance? That’s a pretty good wager.” Hana says.

Icarus shakes his head. “Not if you’re cheating. I’ve seen fifty people come up, and not a single one has won so far.”

“Well,” Hana starts, “it’s unlikely, but that doesn’t mean she’s cheating.”

“Nope. I’m sure of it. She does the same motions every time, the same pattern, without fail. It should be in the center cup each time. And yet-“

Glamour starts to gesture to the center-left cup, but the other two put his arm down, pointing to the middle one. Glamour switches his choice to coincide with his friends’.

With a mock frown, the tiefling lifts the middle cup. No ball.

The three of them look disappointed – Glamour a bit more so – and walk away, the tiefling smiling at them and urging them to come back soon.

“Well, what can you do?” Hana says, finishing her meat and throwing away the wooden skewer. 

Icarus rolls up his sleeves. “I’m gonna win, that’s what.”

Icarus marches towards the tiefling, who smiles jovially.

"Welcome! I believe I've seen you eyeing my game, if I'm not mistaken," She says with a wink. "Have you decided to come to play?"

"Yeah, I have," Icarus says, smiling through gritted teeth. He palms three gold onto the table. "Put me in for a round."

To his surprise, she pushes his gold back. "I'm sorry, but with all the time you've spent studying my technique, I'm afraid it just wouldn't be fair, would it?"

The two of them stare each other down, the tiefling seemingly ready to break into laughter at any moment.

Icarus digs into his bag, pulling out two handfuls of coins. He throws them down, the metal jangling loudly. A few passersby crane their necks to see.

"How about for fifty gold, then? But if I win, I get twice my money back."

The tiefling's smile evaporates. She looks ruffled for the first time all day. Her eyes go down to the coin and back up to Icarus. "Okay," She says carefully, feeling the words in her mouth. "One round. No repeats, no take backs. Deal?"

"Sure. Now spin 'em."

Warily, the tiefling produces the black ball and scoots it underneath one of the cups. Again, she spins them in the same pattern that Icarus had seen over and over, dozens of times, without deviation.

The tiefling stops, looking considerably less worried, and gestures widely. "Pick a cup, any cup."

Icarus draws both his double barrel pistols, holding them akimbo. All the muscles in the tiefling's body tense as he slams the triggers, a spread of four bullets striking the four cups on the ends, leaving the one in the middle. Red hot with lead, the cups fly back, almost clipping either side of the tiefling's ears.

Icarus drops both guns on the table, clattering with a hard metallic thud. He picks up the small remaining cup daintily in his hand, flipping it upside down, presenting it to the tiefling.

"I think it's in  _ this _ cup."

She laughs nervously. With a wave of her hand, she magically produces the small black sphere, gingerly placing it in the upturned cup.

Icarus grins. "I'll be taking my gold now.”


	11. Snow

Despite the temperate time of year, Dragmiria is overcome with a sudden flash freeze. Overnight, the ground has been blanketed with a light, fluffy sheet of snow, several inches deep, stretching out for miles all over the countryside. The local notice boards anticipate that the weather anomaly should subside in a day or two, but residents have been urged to take advantage of the snow while they can.

They did.

Icarus's back is pressed up against a barrier of snow, about two feet high. He catches his breath, counting his last remaining stockpile of snowballs. _One, two... only five left_, he thinks to himself. _Better make them count_.

He pops up from behind the barrier, scanning for targets. He catches Arel trying to run between two nearby buildings, but he's too slow. Icarus gets a shot off. The snowball leaves his hand and careens towards Arel's chest.

Arel ducks out of the way at the last instant. With a wave of his hand, the air around him charges with energy. Icarus recognizes it as his ray of frost spell, but Arel alters it just before it's released. Instead of the usual blue ray of cold, a half dozen icy snowballs are generated around him in a wide fan. He snaps, forming two finger guns as the snowballs are propelled in every direction.

Guided by magical energy, one of the projectiles soars over to Icarus. As he ducks behind his barrier, the snowball finds him anyway, circumventing the obstacle and striking him on the head. Icarus pops back up. “Come on, Arel, that's cheating!”

Arel simply smiles and blows the tips of his fingers, which are smoking with a faint trail of magical essence. “You didn't say magic was against the rules.”

With that, Hana comes out of her hiding place behind a nearby stone wall. “_Are_ we allowed to use magic?” she asks. “Because that would make this a _lot_ more interesting.”

“No, we're not allowed to use magic!” Icarus protests. “Because _I_ don't know how to use magic. It wouldn't be fair.”

Arel laughs. “Since when have you cared about 'fair'?”

“You're right,” Icarus says, his hand on his chin. He bellows, “Glamour! I'll buy you something shiny if you take Arel out!”

“Hah! No way!” comes a voice from somewhere.

“Fine, I'll buy you something shiny if you take out_ Illya_, then.”

Illya walks out from behind a large tree. “Oh come now, that's absurd.”

Glamour jumps up from the roof of Emile's inn, where his hiding place was. “Got you!” He leaps off the building, targeting Illya with a flurry of magical snowballs, not holding back. She tries to duck back behind the tree, but she's pelted with dozens of magically frozen snowballs before can make it. Glamour's spell ends, and he gracefully tumble rolls onto the ground, sticking a three point landing.

Waist deep in snow, Illya brushes the frost from her hair and narrows her eyes at Glamour. “Oh, you're going to wish you didn't do that.” Her arms erupt into a gale of snow and ice, the transformation continuing through to her torso and up past her head. Her legs are engulfed by the same sensation, and her body explodes with frigid force. Illya now embodies the elemental fury of a snowstorm, shards of ice and huge chunky snowflakes falling off her as she moves towards Glamour.

True fear in his eyes, Glamour turns and runs for cover, but Illya is faster. Her body swirls around, generating a whirlwind vortex of pure elemental rage. Sheets of heavy, packed snow shoot outwards in every direction. Glamour dives for Arel and puts up a stone wall at the last moment, protecting them both. Not directly in the line of sight, Icarus hunkers behind his own modest wall, praying to whatever gods might protect him.

Hana is not so lucky, being caught off guard by the sudden transformation, and caught totally out in the open. She receives the brunt of the damage, as layers and layers of snow fall upon the small girl, completely covering her.

Illya's assault finally ends, seeing that Glamour has mostly protected himself, and resolves to try a secondary approach. Before she can make another move, she notices the misshapen pile of snow where Hana stood moments before. “Oh, sorry sweetheart, I didn't mean to-”

A hand fiercely breaks free from the snow, a glowing white energy radiating outward from the palm. Illya takes a step back. Glamour drops his stone wall, curious to see what's happening. Even Icarus peeks over his barrier, trying to catch a glimpse.

Two beams of light shoot out from the snow pile. The snow shifts away from Hana, seemingly of its own accord, uncovering her. The lights are coming from her eyes. The soft noise of chiming bells falls around them all. The air seems to stop where it is, as the energy within Hana coalesces. The clouds shift above them, creating a layer of low overcast clouds. A white spray of snow rises up around them, obscuring the air like a fog, hampering their vision past a hundred feet.

The rest of the party can only watch in awe as the ghostly apparition of a woman, her long braided hair drifting in the still wind, appears before them in the sky. Perhaps twenty feet tall, her icy blue form gently sways in the air, effortless and easy. She laughs to herself, her voice ringing in their ears with an impossible echo. She raises a hand. The sky darkens, almost blotting out the sun. Then, she snaps her fingers, and a feeling of dread overcomes all of them.

**THUD.**

The area around them is buried under three feet of snow, totally submerging Illya, Glamour, Arel, and Icarus. Even the inn is sunk, going nearly all the way up to the top of the front door.

Hana, unaffected by the power of her grand summon, looks around and sighs. “Oh. Guess I overdid it, huh?” She trudges off, her feet sinking deep into the snow with every step. “Let's see if we can find a shovel around here...”


	12. Dragon

Hana, Illya, and Glamour all approach Icarus expectantly. Icarus, doing some maintenance on his new experimental handcannon – courtesy of Hana's previous efforts a few nights prior – looks up, puzzled.

“Hey Icarus, how's it going?” Hana asks, leaning forward. The other two flank him and hover over him, casting a wide collective shadow.

Icarus sets the gun down, resolving that he won't be able to do any more work until this matter is cleared up. “I promise, whatever you guys think I did, I probably didn't do it. Maybe.”

“Don't worry, you're not in trouble,” Illya says, not entirely convincingly. “We just wanted to check something. Isn't that right?” She looks over at Glamour, who smiles.

“Uhh,” Icarus stammers, growing uncomfortable. “You guys are acting-”

“Are you a dragon? Like, a real dragon? You are, aren't you?!” Hana shouts, her face a few inches closer to his than he'd like.

Icarus puts both his hands up. “Woah, woah! Where's this coming from?”

Glamour smiles too wide. “We were just curious. You don't really talk about it, ya know? We wanted to get to know you better.”

Before Icarus has a chance to respond, Illya whips out a book. She licks her index finger and quickly turns to a dog-eared page. “It says here that chromatic green dragons are attuned to the inherent energies of the forest, and exert some control over that domain of nature.” She looks back up at the confused Icarus, her finger still keeping place on the page.

“Listen, I'm- yeah, I'm a dragon. Right? I mean, look at me!”

Hana pumps a fist in the air. “Aha! Knew it. Told you guys.”

Glamour waves a finger at Hana. “Not so fast. Hey, Icarus. You able to breathe underwater? Says here that even the youngest wyrmlings can do that.”

“Honestly? I can't remember the last time I was underwater. Don't like swimming much.”

“Acid, then,” he continues, unfazed. “You get burned by acid?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know?! I don't think most people come into contact with acid on a daily basis.”

Glamour unsheathes his sword. The surface of the blade is warped with an undulating green energy. He smiles wickedly. His glasses shine in the light, hiding his eyes behind the devious glint. “Well, I know one way to find out. Waddya say, Illya?”

Instead of chastising Glamour like she'd normally do, her eyes take on that same sheen, shining with nefarious intent. “Sounds like an excellent idea.”

Icarus darts from his seat, taking several steps back. “W-what? Have you all gone crazy? Hana, come on. Stop them!”

“Don't you have fire breath or something? I've swear I've seen you breathe fire before.” Hana says, as if trying to convince Icarus that – contrary to all memory and logic – he has indeed breathed fire.

“No. What? No!” he yells, continuing to back up slowly, putting more space between him and the slowly advancing crowd. “What are you on about? You're starting to creep me out. Yeah, I'm a dragon. You happy? End of question period.”

“Prove it,” Illya says, serious. “If you are one, you should be able to do something that proves you're a dragon.” She holds up her book. “Anything, anything on this list should suffice.”

Icarus reads the page she's selected, growing nervous. _Camouflage, clouds of miasma, charm spells, controlling plants_; none of these seem anything remotely like things he'd be able to do. Not even things he'd be able to fake, in a pinch. Suddenly, inspiration strikes. He snaps his fingers. “Wait, do you remember that potion that we took from the fey duke's alchemy lab? The blue one, the one that was incomplete.”

The three of them think for a moment. “I think so,” Hana says. “The blue one? But didn't it need-” Realization dawns on her face. “Hey, Arel!” she calls out.

Arel steps halfway out the doorway to his bedroom, looking tired. “I was taking a nap. What do you want?”

“You got those potions we found in the fey still kicking around?” Hana asks sweetly. “We need to settle something.”

“Uh, yeah, I still got them,” Arel says, wiping the sleep from one eye. “But why?”

“Just bring the blue one, if you'd be so kind.” Icarus's body is tensed with fight or flight, but he holds his ground, the others enthralled by the new idea.

Quickly, the potion is brought out, a palm-sized spherical beaker filled with deep cobalt liquid. Arel hands it to Hana, who uncorks it. A small waft of smoke coils out. She swirls it, the viscous blue concoction bubbling on its own. “Well Icarus? Care to do the honors?”

_I guess I don't have a choice now, do I?_ Icarus thinks to himself. He pulls a thin knife from one of the bandoliers on his chest. Rolling up his left sleeve, he carefully wedges the point of the blade underneath one of his scales. “Now, if I remember right, this potion just needs a dragon scale, right?” He grits his teeth, bracing for the pain. He slices a cut at the root of where the scale meets his flesh, loosening it. He roughly pulls the scale free. A small amount of blood leaks down his arm. Arel covers his mouth, a bit disturbed at the display. Illya looks a bit worried now too, but the apparent hunger in her eyes has not yet subsided.

Hana presents the potion to Icarus, who takes the scale and drops it into the potion. It reacts immediately, bubbling and fizzing, almost threatening to overflow, but dying back down, coloring the vial a slightly darker shade than before. He takes it from her. “Now – again, if I remember this right – this should be a healing potion now. So if I'm a dragon, this potion is finished, and this cut on my arm should heal up good and proper when I take a drink.” He looks around at all the eager faces, plus Arel, who's wondering what kind of mess he's been suddenly dragged into.

Icarus sighs. “Bottom's up, then.” He takes a small sip. The liquid burns through his throat, but then turns into a pleasant tingling sensation. Icarus smiles, feeling the warmth pass through his body. “See? Good as new.” 

The tingling sensation stops, replaced by a painful sickening feeling. Icarus stops smiling. “Good...as...new...ha ha...” His eyes go vacant as he falls backward.

At the last moment, Arel grabs the unsuccessfully finished potion, not wanting it to do more damage than its already caused. Icarus collapses on the ground and lies there, unconscious. Arel sniffs the potion. He turns away his nose, his face scrunching up from the new smell.

Hana grumbles, handing Illya and Glamour each twenty gold as they walk away, high-fiving. Arel turns and walks back into his room with a flat expression, shutting the door behind him.

Hana purses her lips and stares at the wyvaran on the ground. "You owe me forty gold, Icarus."


	13. Ash

Icarus slams his hand of cards down on the table. “That's impossible! How did you draw 'The Fool' four rounds in a row?”

Glamour scoops up all the cards, shuffling again. “It's not about the cards you draw, it about how you use them. You wanna go again? C'mon, we'll play for best twelve out of twenty-three.”

“No way.” Icarus pounds the table. “My luck has been weirdly awful tonight. Gimmie those cards, I want to make sure you're not cheating.”

Glamour laughs and hands the tarot deck over. “Sure, I've got nothing to hide. Like I actually need to use dirty tricks in order to beat you?”

As Icarus starts scanning each card closely, front to back, checking for marks, Arel walks in. “Oh, are you guys playing?”

“Nope,” Icarus tells him. “Just finished. Turns out that Glamour's either a whiz at Tarocco, or a fantastic cheat. Wiped the floor with me.”

“Tarocco?” Arel asks. “Yeah, we used to play that a lot when we were kids. Glamour got real good at it. Never had much of a knack, myself.

“Ha ha, you're just lucky we weren't playing for money, otherwise you'd be broke.”

Icarus growls. “Damn it, I can't find a mark on these cards. Still, there's only one way to be safe. Arel, flaming sphere, please.”

Arel cocks his head at Icarus. “Um, why?”

“Listen, if you don't wanna make one, I'll just start a fire in here myself.”

Aiming to avoid disaster, Arel complies, summoning a small sphere of fire beside him. It hovers half a foot off the ground, careful to navigate it away from anything that might go up in flames.

Icarus gathers all the cards together and tosses them into the sphere. A spike of flame shoots up, bright green, before dying back down a moment later.

A muffled voice calls out from behind a closed door. “No fires in the house!” Arel nervously puts out his flaming sphere and dismisses it, not wanting to incur Illya's wrath. The ash from the cards falls down, pooling in a small pile on the floor.

“Hey, why'd you do that?” Glamour asks. “That probably wasn't a good idea.”

“Why, what were those cards made out of? I've burned a couple decks for bad luck in my time, and I've never seen one go up green like that.”

“Well those weren't my cards, first of all.”

“Then who-”

Icarus is interrupted by a scream from behind him. Hana had apparently walked in moments ago, and witnessed Icarus toss the cards into the fire.

Illya's door flies open. “I _said_ no fires in the house.”

“It's out, it's fine,” Arel says, half pleading.

“No, it's _not_ fine,” Hana shouts, clearly upset. “Those cards were very special. Glamour, you told me you'd take good care of them.”

“I did,” Glamour says, somewhat losing his composure in the presence of such a distressed Hana. “It was Icarus-”

“Hey,” Icarus interrupts. “Nobody told me that was a special set of cards. You should have said so sooner!”

Hana kneels down beside the pile of ashes, sifting through them wistfully with her index finger. “It was a present from Emile. A used Deck of Many Things. The power was used up over many years, but the cards still remained. It's a rare collector's item. Not to mention, to transcribe magic that powerful, the value of the ink alone was probably worth thousands of gold.”

Thousands?!” Icarus, Glamour, and Arel stammer all at once. Arel has to sit down and put a hand on his head. Glamour just stares incredulously at the tiny blackened pile. A mask of dread falls over Icarus's countenance.

Illya calmly walks over to the ashes and sweeps them up in her hands. “Well, it's not all bad. Ashes actually contain a lot of nutrients, and if you mix a small amount of them with soil, it can fortify some species of plants.”

Arel, still dazed, speaks in a distant voice. “And the condensed latent magical essence in the cards would probably be helpful for the plant outside the inn.”

Illya nods. “Exactly. One thing ends and another begins. It's the circle of life. You have to make the best of a bad situation, no matter how dire.”

Hana still looks downcast, but she straightens her posture, trying to recover. “Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Maybe it'll help the plant. Let's do that.”

Icarus laughs nervously. “All is forgiven then? No harm, no foul?”

Hana comes up close, scarily intimidating despite their nearly foot and a half difference in height. She pulls him down by the collar, dragging him to meet her at eye level. “Oh, not by a long shot.”


	14. Overgrown

The party is just finishing up a full course breakfast, courtesy of Hana, when Illya gets up to leave. She tries the door handle. It doesn't budge.

“Uh, guys? Did somebody jam the door closed last night?” she asks the room. Everyone looks puzzled.

“Hey, don't look at me!” Icarus says, since several of them _were _eyeing him suspiciously.

“Maybe it's stuck,” Arel suggests. “Put some weight into it, it might come loose.”

Illya throws her body into the door, shoving against it. No luck. She tries a few more times, her attempts growing more aggressive with each attempt. The door doesn't budge an inch.

Glamour breathes heavier, his face stiffening. “We're not trapped in here, are we?”

“No, of course not,” Arel says softly, putting a hand on Glamour's shoulder. “Worst comes to worst, we can just break the door down. But first, maybe Illya can check to see what's holding this door shut.”

Illya nods and opens one of the few windows in the building. They're very small. None of them – apart from Hana, possibly – would have a chance of fitting their bodies through them. Illya's form glows for a moment, shifting down to the shape of a tiny bluebird. With a flit of her wings, she escapes the inn, leaving the others in silence.

“Let's hope Illya can fix this,” Hana says to the others. “I'm not sure that breaking down the door is really an option.”

Icarus laughs. “Are you kidding? I think we have enough firepower in this room to take down a measly door.”

Hana shakes her head. “This inn is something else. Emile told me that he's put some enchantments on the door, as a precaution. I think he's paranoid, but he says that doorways and pathways have a powerful and dangerous natural magic to them. I don't know why, but he's awfully protective of this place, for what it is.”

Icarus slaps his forehead. “Wow, what a great time to send Emile out for groceries. The  _one time_ he's not here polishing his stupid glass, and this happens.”

Illya comes back, soaring gracefully through the open window. She transforms back into her humanoid shape mid-flight, landing on the floor with deft composure. “Guys, I have some bad news.”

Glamour's face gets even more pale, somehow. “I knew it, we're trapped!”

“Don't worry, we have enough food in here to last us a few days at least.” Icarus says nonchalantly. “And if it comes to it, we'll just draw straws to see who gets to eat each other to survive.”

Hana puts up her hands. “Hey, I'm tiny. I don't have nearly as much meat on me as the rest of you.”

A tiny scream escapes Glamour's mouth. Arel pats his back, trying to comfort him. “Hey, stop saying stuff like that. I'm sure we'll be out soon.” He looks desperately at Illya. “Right?”

She smiles nervously. “Well, you see, you know the plant that's been growing outside? Well, it took to the ashes we fed it yesterday.” Her expression darkens. “I mean, it  _really_ took.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the roots have overgrown so much, they're blocking the door now. It's totally covered with them. On the plus side, the plant seems to have grown into a decent sized tree.”

“I don't care about the plant,” Icarus yells. “What about _us_? Just hack up the roots so we can get out of here.”

Illya looks appalled. “No, we can't do that!”

“There has to be another way out,” Arel says. “Can you work some of your druid magic to like, I don't know, ask it nicely to move?”

Illya seems unsure. “Well, it might take a while, but I'll can see what I can do. I'll need to meditate on it though.”

“And how long should that take?” Glamour asks hesitantly.

Illya averts her eyes. “Maybe, uh, eight hours? Perhaps a bit more than that?”

Glamour takes a few rapid deep breathes, staring off into space.

“To hell with this!” Icarus pulls out his seraphic pistol and fires both barrels at the door. Each bullet ricochets off it, whizzing across the small room and embedding themselves on either side of Illya's head.

Her faze frozen, she turns away from them, heading to her room. “I'll get started on that, then. Hana, Arel; make sure Icarus doesn't kill anyone while I'm gone.”

“We'll try our best, no promises,” Hana responds.

“At least make sure Glamour survives, then.”

Arel, still holding a terrified Glamour, side-eyes Icarus. “That's a promise I can keep.”


	15. Legend

Several hours have passed since Illya decided to meditate on a way to escape the inn. Emile still hasn't come back yet. The other four are sitting around the common room, trying to distract themselves. Arel sketches in a notebook, replicating the exact image of the room's furniture. Hana has brought out a pile of books and set them aside. She finishes her second book of the evening and begins progress on a third. Glamour is absentmindedly making a stack of small clay roses using prestidigitation. Icarus simply sits cross-legged, thinking.

Glamour suddenly lets out a long groan. “I'm sick of waitingggg, when are we gonna get outttt?”

“Four hours, twenty-seven minutes, and thirty-two seconds, more or less,” Hana says without looking up. “That's if Illya's suggestion of eight hours is accurate.”

“That's too loooooong,” Glamour whines. “I hate being cooped up in here. This place is so tiny.”

“It's not that bad,” Icarus says, still in his meditative stance.

“Oh, is it?” Glamour responds venomously. “You sure? Maybe your wings are getting stiff. Maybe you just _really_ feel the need to fly around right now. Huh?” Icarus doesn't respond. “Am I the only one going stir crazy in here?”

Hana closes her book. “Yeah, I wanna get out of here too. But you can't be alone with your thoughts for a little while?”

“Hey, I _am_ alone with my thoughts. And my thoughts are saying 'this sucks, I wanna leave'.”

“I actually know how you feel,” says Icarus. “It's not easy. Your whole body feels like it's fizzing, your brain feels like it's gonna melt, and your heart feels like it's being crushed into a tiny sphere.” Icarus opens one eye at Glamour.

“Yeah, that it,” Glamour says, a bit surprised. “So you feel it too?”

Icarus shakes his head. “I was a pirate for years. Our ship couldn't have been bigger than this building. I was stuck in a small cabin for most of my days.”

Glamour scoffs. “But you could go outside. You could fly, if you wanted.”

“Fly where? Do what? There's nothing but sky and ocean all around. Where would I go? What would I do? No matter how big the cage is, it's still a cage.”

“Mmh,” Hana says, still reading. “Airships are the same. Maybe worse.”

Arel purses his lips, not looking up. His pencil stops moving. “Yeah. You just, get used to it, after a while.”

Glamour looks at him, puzzled.

Arel grimaces, half-meeting Glamour's eyes. “My room back at the house wasn't very big, you know. I spent a lot of time in there.”

Glamour looks bashful. “Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

Arel stammers, trying to find some apologetic response, but Icarus interjects. “Let me tell you the legend of Eloise Warwick, the vengeful.” He breathes deep. Everyone stops what they're doing and stares at him expectantly, waiting for him to continue.

“Eloise was a fledgling fighter, like most brave older children fancy themselves where they're of age to strike out into the world by themselves. Her dad was the appointed governor of the town she lived in. Her mom had fallen to corruption, doing shady dealings with a society of goblins near the town.

“One day, Eloise had been given permission to take on a mission to quell some of the goblins outside her town, who'd been growing increasingly violent. Turns out it was a set up. Eloise's mother had sold her out. She was taken captive and sent to the underground tunnels beneath the goblins' cave network. Much later, she'd found out that her mom had arranged with the goblins to stage a coup on the town and take it over, using her father as a puppet to control it, threatening to kill his daughter if he didn't cooperate.”

The room was silent. Everyone waited with baited breath. “And then what?” Hana asked.

“Well, Eloise was taken and thrown in a cell. She was just a bartering chip. They didn't even want her there, they just needed her alive. Her cell was smaller than this room. Maybe five feet across each way, or less. She stayed in there for eight long years, and she didn't crack. Her dad managed to arrange a deal with the goblins eventually. Smuggled some stuff in for her. She kept herself in good physical condition. She wasn't treated poorly. She just waited. And waited. No news. No explanation. Just four walls and three meager meals a day.”

“I can't even imagine,” Glamour says, shaking his head.

“And she got out?” Arel asks.

“Yup. Her dad managed to slip her a makeshift lockpick into a birthday present he'd been able to send. She broke out and fled back to her home, which had been completely taken over by goblins by that point. She ran further into the country, continuing her studies in the blade for several years. Eventually she returned to kill every last goblin and liberate her town, saving her father and putting her mother to death for her betrayal. She became known all across the land as a folk hero, celebrated in stories and songs.” Icarus looks up, deep in thought. “I read that story over a hundred times in my sailing days. Sometimes it was the only thing keeping me from going totally insane.”

Hana snaps her fingers. “Oh, Warwick, I know that one. She did the usual adventurer shtick for a few decades and then she got eaten by a door mimic. Fun fact: two out of three adventurers get killed by door mimics! It's surprisingly common.”

Icarus grumbles. “I was going to leave that part out, thanks. And I don't think that statistic is accurate.”

Mortified, Glamour slowly turns to face the inn's door. It stands there, menacingly. He gulps.

Hana shrugs and goes back to her book. “Oh well. Only four hours, twenty-two minutes and fifty-three seconds until we're out of here.”

“Hopefully,” Glamour says in a tiny voice.

Arel sighs and rolls his eyes. “Door mimics...”


	16. Wild

“Dire wolf?” Glamour suggests.

“Nah,” Icarus replies. “Claws aren't sharp enough.”

“Grizzly bear?”

“You think a _bear_ could break through these walls?”

“How about an dire bear?”

Hana scoffs. “I can't summon a dire bear.”

“Well, _I_ don't know what you can summon,” Glamour protests.

Arel sighs. “Hey, Illya is almost done figuring out how to get us out of here. At least, she should be...”

Icarus gestures wildly at Arel. “See, you don't even know! It could be another day, for all we know. Maybe whatever she's trying isn't going to work. We should have a backup plan.”

Glamour looks at Arel with pleading eyes. “Come on, I'm bored out of my mind. I have to do  _something_.” 

“Okay, fine,” Arel says reluctantly. “But don't get too carried away. I'm responsible for you while Illya's fixing this.”

“Us? Carried away?” Hana says, deadpan. “Couldn't happen. Not in a million years.”

“Hey, what do you mean, 'responsible for us'?” Icarus growls. “We don't need a babysitter.”

“Oh, what about a shark?” Glamour says, Arel's elvish ears instinctively perking up. “That could probably work.”

Arel laughs. “Okay, there's no way-”

“Hana can't summon a shark, she's not that good,” Icarus interrupts him.

Hana looks crossly at Icarus and Arel. “I can  _too_ summon a shark. It's easy.”

“Nope,” Icarus says smugly. “I don't believe you. Prove it.”

“That's ridiculous, I'm not gonna summon a shark in here just to prove to you that I can.”

Glamour leans over to Arel. “She probably can't do it,” he says, practically in a stage whisper, loud enough for Hana to easily hear.

Hana's face scrunches up in anger. She stares daggers at Icarus, Glamour, and Arel in turn. “Okay, fine. You want a shark? You've got one.” Her hands arc through the air, magical force coalescing into her palms and erupting with a bright light. A shape starts to form between them all, hovering over the table.

After about five seconds, the shape sharpens and comes into focus. Twelve feet long, white bellied and sharp toothed, a great white shark forms in the middle of the room. It wiggles a few times in panic, and then drops onto the common room table, shattering it on impact with over two thousand pounds of muscle and cartilage.

Everyone besides Hana screams, backing into any corner they can find. Glamour and Arel go into the same one, Arel trying to set a bit of distance between Glamour and the ferocious sea creature now in their living room. Icarus unluckily is positioned directly in front of the shark's head. Seeing him first, it gnashes its jaws, squirming uselessly against the lack of an ocean around it, making an intimidating display nonetheless.

“Hana,” Icarus screams. “Can you please put the shark away? I promise not to make fun of you anymore.”

“Pinkie swear on it?”

“Yes! Pinkie swear, whatever! Just get the shark out of here.”

Hana taps her finger on her chin a few times. “I dunno, that promise didn't seem very sincere.”

Just then, Illya enters the room. She immediately recoils from the sight of three of her friends being threatened by a fruitlessly flailing shark. She composes herself as much as one can possibly do with an angry apex predator five feet away. “Whatever this is, please stop. I think I have something to get us out.”

With a snap of Hana's fingers, the shark vanishes, causing Arel, Glamour, and particularly Icarus to breathe a deep sigh of relief. Hana laughs innocently. “Sorry, just killing time.”

Illya raises an eyebrow. “Uh huh. Well, everybody, hold onto a piece of furniture. This might get bumpy.”

“Bumpy?” Arel asks. He doesn't get a response. Illya's eyes flash green as a rumbling overtakes the inn. Everyone scrambles for a piece of the inn to hang onto. The floor shakes, and the building lists to one side, rocking back and forth. A sound like a thousand crackling twigs fills the room. An image of the whole room breaking in half flashes through everyone's minds. All of them but Illya exchange worried glances. Eventually the shaking stops, and everyone relaxes a bit.

“What happened?” Icarus asks, stepping gingerly away from a door frame. The floor is now sloped downward at a slight incline.

“I used some of the roots from the tree to actually shift the building away, so that it wouldn't interfere with the area that the plant was growing in.” She walks over to the door and tries the handle. It opens just a crack, but no further.

Hana balls her fists up and groans. “That's it!” She harnesses her summoning powers again in a flurry of motion. A streak of light develops in the center of the room, which bursts forth into the shape of a charging rhinoceros. Summoned in mid-stampede, it uses its strong horn to break a hole in the side of the inn, taking out a big chunk of the wall and continuing past it.

Unfortunately, unbeknownst to them all, the inn had been raised thirty feet into the air, the roots of the tree now keeping the entire building aloft. The rhino runs straight into open air and plunges down, eventually landing with a heavy smack onto its back. All five of them peek through the hole in the side of the building, staring down. The rhino sadly wiggles its feet in the air, body embedded into the ground, unable to right itself.

Everybody looks dismally at Hana, who tires to hide her head in her shoulders. “What? It worked, didn't it?”

“I did prepare other spells to get us out of here, you know,” Illya responds, already starting to use her druid magic to guide the inn back to ground level. “And you're going to have to explain to Emile why there's a huge hole in his building when he gets back, little missy.”

Hana spins her magic back up, dispelling her summon. “Sorry Rhyno,” she says under her breath. “You'll get 'em next time, buddy.”


	17. Ornament

A huge hexagonal gothic chandelier hangs from the ceiling of Emile's inn. Polished brass and intricate chain links upward to a thick column that extends to the top of the room, coming down and almost reaching the table in the center, hovering a few inches above it. Six torches branch out from the center, ornate mounted spires jutting downward on their holders, crowned by upward pointed arches that surround the brightly burning flames encased in glass. The whole thing is a thick monument of spiraling brass lattice and minature flying buttresses. It's massive, heavy, and truly gaudy.

Glamour stands proudly in front of it, admiring his prize. Arel looks across to him opposite the table, barely visible through the intricate oculi and tracery, the crisscrossing lines weaving a maze of delicately crafted decadence that makes his head spin. “So, where did you get this, again?”

“Auction,” Glamour breathes, stars in his eyes. “It's a good place to look for new coffins. They sell 'em for dirt cheap, you know. You'd be surprised how many people will turn away an awesome-looking coffin just cause it's a little used.” Glamour clears his throat, getting back on track. “Anyway, I saw this and I just couldn't pass it up. Hardly cost me anything. Can you believe it? I could barely carry it home by myself, but it was worth it. Look at it!”

It's impossible not to look at it. It's the only thing one could possibly look at. The shiny ornamental chandelier seems to take up the entire room. Fragments of light reflect off its polished surface, scattering rippling flecked drops of candlelight over the tiny space, making every corner twinkle. Arel tries his best be supportive. “Well, it's uh, certainly something.”

Icarus walks in just then. “Whoa! Didn't know we were opening up a museum for terrible old junk,” he laughs. Arel frantically tries to gesture, telling him to stop whatever he's saying, but the damage has been done.

“Hey, it's not junk,” Glamour says indignantly. “It's art and it's beautiful and it's staying.”

“Are you kidding? We can't even use the table any more, there's so much chandelier taking up the space.”

“Oh yeah? You can eat on the floor then.”

“Listen, punk. I'm not going to be ranked below a piece of furniture in this household,” Icarus shoots back. “Either it goes, or I do.”

“I guess you can go, then.”

Icarus throws his hands up at Arel. “Come on, man. Back me up.”

Arel thinks for a moment, choosing his words carefully. “Maybe we could spend a day or two and see how it goes first. Who knows? You might grow to like it.”

Hana comes out of her room. “Hey, I'm hungry. Do we still have any-” She stops, staring pointedly at the new chandelier. “Why do we have old junk hanging from the ceiling?”

Glamour turns on her. “It's not _junk_. It's _art_. And it's very shiny. And I wanted to do something nice for my friends and make their living space look nice but I guess nobody around here appreciates me.”

“I appreciate you,” Arel says quietly.

“Heck yeah,” Glamour says, his glasses shining, amplified by the dazzling torchlights.

Hana tilts her head. “So, it's staying  _in_ the building?”

“That's what he's saying, yeah,” Icarus explains, glancing at Arel.

Illya comes back from her walk, opening the door to the rest of the party gathered around the new chandelier. “Oh my. How did this old-” She's cut off mid-sentence as everyone else turns on her; Glamour is glaring daggers, and the rest of them plead with their eyes for Illya to stop herself from finishing that sentence.

“An improvement to the inn, which Glamour has generously donated,” Hana explains. “It's 'art'.”

“Hey now,” Icarus says. “I've collected art. This? This is not art.”

“Well, maybe you should spend a little time with it first.” Glamour pulls out a seat, gesturing to it. “Emile, can you hook us up with some lunch? I think we could use a bit of quality time with the chandelier.”

* * *

All five of them are hunched over, plates barely able to fit on the table, trying to find the correct angles to stab at their meat and potatoes while the twisted metal of the chandelier occupies most of the dining space. Icarus tries to push the chandelier to the side so he can get a good view of his plate. It swings, the bottom of one of the torches knocking over Illya's cup on the other side, the glass shattering on the floor. She just sighs.

“Yeah, I dunno if this is gonna work so well,” Hana says in a soft voice.

Glamour picks at his food sadly. “Aw man, I just wanted to help out, you know? I thought everybody would like it.”

“Hey, I like it, Glamour,” Arel says with a smile that's just a little forced. He looks around at the others. None of them make eye contact.

“Well, that's something, I guess,” Glamour mumbles.

“Hey, don't worry. I bet you can still do something else with that chandelier, since you like it so much. Maybe there's not room in here, but somewhere else?”

Glamour thinks for a moment, and then brightens. “Yeah. Yeah, you're right! Thanks Arel.” He cranes his neck to look around at the others. “Don't worry, I'll take it down. It doesn't really fit here, after all.”

The entire table breathes a collective sigh of relief. “Sorry I called it junk, by the way,” Icarus says. “Once you sit down with it for a while, it sorta grows on you.”

Illya and Hana nod in agreement. A bit more jovial, they all try the best they can to finish their meal. Afterwards, they go their separate ways for the afternoon. Arel comes back after sundown, having gone for a refreshing swim and training session with Tempest. He looks around the room, smiling to himself. No trace of Glamour's chandelier. Aiming to grab a fresh change of clothes, he enters his room, and his smile fades. Glamour is standing on Arel's bed, affixing the last bolt to the ceiling to hang up the new chandelier, the bottom of it coming down to hover hardly an inch above the blankets.

“Hey Arel! I thought to myself, 'if nobody else wants it, I should give this chandelier to Arel since he liked it so much'. I hope this is a good place, there isn't a lot of space in here either, haha.”

Arel swallows, his mouth dry. “Um, yeah. Great. Thanks, dude.”

Glamour dusts his hands off on his pants and jumps down from the bed. “Well, I'm gonna get some sleep. Nighty night!” He opens the door to his coffin and gets in, leaving Arel alone with the shining chandelier above his bed. He thinks of all the sleep he's not going to get for the next week or so.

“...goodnight.”


	18. Misfit

In a narrow alleyway off the main streets of Dragmiria, a pair of rowdy street urchins, seemingly no older then fourteen, are cornered by Glamour and Icarus, side by side. Icarus cracks his knuckles as Glamour advances on them. Despite having nowhere to run, the two kids hold their ground, defiant in the face of defeat.

“I don't like it when people steal from me,” Glamour tells them, advancing. He pushes up his glasses and gives them an especially toothy grin, flashing his vampire fangs. “So you're gonna give me back my coin purse now, before I get medieval on you.”

The kids look around for a way out, but the walls are high and nondescript. One of them steps forward. She's taller than the boy next to her, wearing a torn leather jerkin and a grey sleeved shirt that might have been white at some point. She whistles loudly with two fingers, causing the other kid to cover his ears. “We're not scared o' you. Not like we 'aven't been roughed up before. Isn't that right, Ronnie?”

The smaller boy looks up at her wild eyes. He pulls his newsboy cap down his face to hide his fear. “Y-yeah, that's right. Think you c-can take us?”

Icarus scoffs. “Come on, Glamour. This is just sad. We don't need to beat up a couple kids over this.”

Glamour looks over his shoulder. “Hey, we can't just let these punks get away with this.” He spots a kid behind Icarus, who runs away as soon as he's seen, sprinting out of the alleyway. “Or that! Icarus, check your pockets.”

His hands flying to his outer pockets, Icarus rummages through them, turning them inside out. “That brat nabbed my spending money!”

The two adventurers now distracted, the cornered street kids use the opportunity to flank around Glamour and make their escape, tripping them as they go.

Caught off guard, Icarus and Glamour try to follow after the nimble children, already making a getaway by ducking through the dense crowds. The pair they had cornered runs off down the street to the left, while the one with Icarus's money climbs a ladder up to the top of a nearby building.

Glamour and Icarus nod to each other, taking off in separate directions.

Icarus heads to the right, following after the boy with his cash. The boy disappears over the rooftops as Icarus takes to the sky. He ascends above the buildings, getting a bird's eye view of the city. But the kid is nowhere to be seen. Icarus searches the sprawling roofs frantically for any sign of movement.

Meanwhile, Glamour pushes past people out for a morning of shopping, trying to get a bead on the thieves. Out of the corner of his eye, he spies them going down another alleyway. He turns sharply, almost knocking over a heavyset man carrying a large basket of apples. He shouts, but the words are lost on him, hyper-focused on getting his money back.

Glamour turns into the alley, but the street punks are nowhere to be seen. Then, a flash of movement overhead, two bodies quickly hustling away. Glamour infuses himself with a sliver of stored arcane power. He lifts himself into the air, shooting upward by kicking off the ground. Reaching the roof with a gentle landing, he fixes his eyes on the thieves, darting from rooftop to rooftop nimbly, but there's already a sizable distance between them.

At that moment, Icarus spots his target darting between the low ridges and parapets of the assorted building tops. Icarus dives, gliding to track their movement along these high, jumbled, makeshift pathways of the city. Glamour notices Icarus, both of them traveling almost parallel to each other over the buildings. The street kids leap over rooftops and scale walls, using window ledges, balconies, and loose stones as footholds. The two adventurers follow they best they can.

Icarus and Glamour gradually become closer as their targets converge with each other. The thieves run further into town, where the buildings gradually increase in height. They're running along structures nearly thirty feet tall now, bounding the narrow gaps between them with practiced ease. Icarus soars above while Glamour sprints, stumbling a few times, using his magic to bail him out of any rough falls when things are about to go horribly wrong.

The kids shout loudly to each other. “They're gaining on us! Pick up the pace, we gotta get back to the hideout,” the girl tells the other two.

“We're trying,” her accomplice says, heaving, trying to keep up. “Why don't we just pick on rich nobles anymore? They were easy.”

The other boy shakes his head. “Not after that last lady who jumped off the roof almost broke my arm, no thank you,” he says between panting breaths.

Glamour and Icarus gain on them; twenty feet behind, then fifteen, then ten. Icarus shouts to Glamour, “We almost got them! Don't let up!”

In the few seconds that Icarus's attention is diverted, the girl looks back and throws a bolas, compensating for the wind direction and trajectory of her target. It trikes true, the rope catching Icarus's arms and wings, the two weights on either end swinging around and tangling him up in several feet of rope.

Icarus only has a few short moments to struggle and look down at the rapidly approaching ground. He instinctively tries to flex his wings and break free, but he's tightly bound up like a turkey. “Oh no.”

Glamour stops, trying to choose between his money or his friend. With a groan, he goes for Icarus, who's slipped between the crack of two buildings and is now hurtling towards an inevitably grievous confrontation with the ground far below.

Glamour springs up, trying to draw energy from his natural well of magic strength, but he's used it all in the pursuit up to this moment, covering for his lack of acrobatic ability. With no choice, he dives for the helpless body of Icarus, who's now full-on screaming.

Without thinking, Glamour grasps Icarus by the rope that's binding him, like carrying a big scaly body pillow. Having only fallen down five feet past the edge of the roof, and with a much larger drop still below them, Glamour summons a wall of stone to catch them. It juts out horizontally from the buildings on either side of them, connecting the space between them. Glamour lands with a _crack_ on top of Icarus. Both of them are hurt, but alive.

There's enough space for both of them to rest on the five foot square platform that Glamour created. The building walls come upward on either side of them, forming a kind of stone cradle in the middle of the tall, narrow alley. Not losing a second, Glamour cuts Icarus's bindings with his sword. He props Icarus up on the opposite wall, taking a breather for himself. On either side of the small platform, there's a dizzying drop onto the ground. Neither of them look down.

“Thanks for the save, Glamour,” Icarus says, breathing hard. “Could've used a softer landing though. I think my arm might be broken.” He cradles his left arm with his right, holding it gingerly.

“I couldn't let you die, come on. What a stupid way to go out.”

They catch their breaths a bit, the adrenaline surging through their systems. “So,” Icarus says. “How much did they take from you?”

Glamour feels his pocket. “They didn't get my main coin purse, just my casual spending one. So ten gold, I think. You?”

“Probably about the same,” Icarus replies. “Was it worth it?”

“For twenty gold?” A smile creeps across Glamour's face. He starts laughing, the sound growing into a full, unrestrained cackle.

Icarus looks at him strangely, but the laughter is infectious, and his nerves are still firing at every synapse. He joins in, the raw, insane emotion getting the better of him. Both of them howl gleefully above a twenty-five foot drop into a trash-filled alley, having nearly died for a handful of money.

The stone beneath them creaks and shifts. They stop laughing. Icarus's eyes go wide.

“Okay, we gotta go, my spell doesn't last that long.”


	19. Sling

“So, it was three kids in a back alley?” Illya asks for the third time.

Icarus sighs. “Well, two kids, and then they called for backup.” He shifts uncomfortably, his broken arm still aching in the sling that he'd quickly instructed Glamour how to make. “They were quick, and one of them had a bolas. Like a kind of rope weapon thingy. Tied me up.”

“A bolas?” She shakes her head. “Where would a bunch of kids even _get_ something like that? Never mind even knowing how to use it.”

“He's telling the truth,” Glamour pleads. “I was there, I saw it happen.”

Illya leans back in her chair and thinks hard for a moment. “Not that I don't believe you, but-”

“You don't believe us,” Icarus grumbles.

Illya nods. “Yes, basically. You two are constantly being reckless and running about with complete disregard of your surroundings. How do I know that you weren't watching where you were going, and you just ran into a cart and bull? How do I know you aren't covering for something worse?”

“Something worse than this? What could _possibly_ be worse than this?”

“We coulda' robbed a bank,” Glamour says. He's taken off his glasses and is trying to use their mirrored sheen to see himself, adjusting his hair in the reflection. “Or tried to beat up a guard, or burn down a building, or-”

“Glamour, you're not really helping our case,” Icarus says, massaging his forehead.

“Hey, you asked,” he replies, unrepentant. Illya side-eyes Icarus.

“Well, regardless, your arm is broken, so we need to take care of that first.”

Glamour goes to leave. “Ew, gross. Let me know when you're done. I get squeamish when there's like, bones sticking out of places.”

Icarus and Illya are left alone in the inn. “Well,” she says, “at least we won't have any distractions while I finish this. Now, let me see. I have to assess the damage first.”

Icarus tenderly removes his arm from the sling, fresh pain throbbing through it with every change in movement. Illya procures a small pair of scissors and begins cutting Icarus's shirt sleeve. He moves to stop her, involuntarily shooting off a fresh wave of pain from his injury. “Woah, hey, what do you think you're doing?”

“Well I have to set the bone if it's out of place,” she explains.

“You can't just, you know, use your healing magic on me? Like you usually do when we get roughed up?”

Illya stares at him with a hard look. “I haven't decided if I want to do that yet.”

Icarus takes a moment to process. “Decided? Like, you can, but you don't  _want_ to? Why in the nine hells wouldn't you?”

“I'm deciding if I should let you face the consequences of your actions this time.”

“Hey, it wasn't my fault! It was those kids who did this to me!”

“No,” Illya says, suddenly very stern. “This was _you_ who did this to you. I don't care who or why or how, but you're _always_ putting yourself in dangerous situations and you're _always_ relying on your friends to bail you out of it. You act like you're tough and invincible, and I'm sick of it. One day you're going to get into trouble – real trouble, not whatever this was – and you're not going to have me around to help you. And maybe you won't have Glamour either. Or Hana, or even Arel. You'll be alone, and you'll be helpless. You'll be in _real_ danger, and nobody will be able to protect you.” She pauses, realizing that her voice is nearly at a shout. She takes a slow breath. “People much stronger than you have died for less than a broken arm.”

Icarus is caught off guard, but he composes himself. He grits his teeth into his usual confident grin. “Well, I don't plan on dying any time soon. You can bet on that.”

Illya puts her scissors away and turns, standing. “Well then, I suppose you can deal with an injury as trifling as this by yourself.” She reaches the front door, striding quickly. Her hand touches the door handle.

“Wait,” Icarus urges, trying not to let desperation seep into his tone. “I'm sorry. You're- you're right. I've been reckless. Not just today, but before now, too.” 

Illya stops, her hand still on the handle. She makes no indication that she's heard him.

“This is new to me, you know? This whole 'team' thing. I've never been a part of a group where we've had each other's backs. On the streets, where I grew up, I had friends, yeah. But it was every person for themselves. Same on the Shattered Moon. We were pirates, and that meant we answered to nobody but the captain. Our lives were forfeit to hers.”

Illya turns to finally look at Icarus. There's a distant sadness in her eyes. “That sounds awful.”

Icarus tries to dispute that, but backs down. “Yeah. It had its moments, don't get me wrong. But it wasn't like this, what we have now.” He glances over the entirety of the tiny inn, which takes all of two seconds. “We weren't a team, really. I'm still getting used to that.”

Illya sits across from Icarus, taking the hand of his still intact arm, and cupping it in her own hands. Both of them look down, eyes drawn to Icarus's makeshift sling. “Listen. I'm not asking you to stop being reckless; that's who you are, and I think it can be a wonderful thing sometimes. Occasionally. But before you put yourself into harm's way, I want you to think about us, all of us. I need you to remember that you aren't the only person who feels something when you get hurt.” She squeezes his hand softly. “We share the same fate now. If one of us fall, we all fall.”

Icarus pulls his hand away gently. He rummages through his bag of holding for a second, retrieving a stone tablet. A few runes glow with trace magical essence. “We all signed that paperwork, didn't we? We're together now, whether we like it or not. A team. Souls intertwined by fate, and all that bullshit.”

Illya laughs, the sound like a gentle spring breeze. “That's right. You're contractually obligated to listen to me. So don't be an idiot, okay?”

Icarus laughs too, despite himself. “Does that mean you'll heal my arm?”

Illya smiles impishly. “Okay. But you owe me one. I get to call in a favor, and you're not allowed to say no.”

Icarus gulps. “Your wish is my command.”


	20. Tread

Glamour and Illya stalk through the woods, trying to make as little noise as possible. Neither of them really understanding the basic principles of stealth, they don't have much success, but they try as best they can. Crouched low, they follow a set of large animal tracks.

“So, did you actually _see_ the things we're stalking?” Illya asks, keeping her voice to a whisper.

“No,” Glamour says, “but I didn't want anything that big stomping around by itself. There were like four or five sets of tracks, I think. Maybe. I dunno. Coulda been the same monster. Like a huge chicken or something. Somebody might get hurt, you know?”

Illya pauses.“A big chicken?”

“Hey, Arel told me about this one chicken that looks at you and turns you to stone. Which is so crazy. Like what if it looked at a bunch of bugs, like mosquitoes or something? Would _they_ all turn to stone? Actually that sounds pretty handy. I kinda want one now.”

“A cockatrice, I think they're called.”

“Nice. Do you think we can get one for the inn? To keep the bugs out. There was one of those gross long ones with the million legs crawling around the other day.” Glamour shudders, recalling the memory. “I actually learned this new spell where I can look at things and they burst into flames. But like, I can't do that to _every_ bug, you know?”

Wait a minute,” Illya says. “Is that why there was a burning hole in the floor the other day?”

“Haha what noooo,” Glamour says, looking around frantically. “Hey look, more tracks. Gotta find these big chickens, right? Keep people safe, yup.”

“Well, that's very thoughtful of you,” Illya responds, smiling and shaking her head. She resists the urge chastise Glamour too harshly. He'd been through a lot after fighting with Icarus about his mom's sigil being in that prison cell. Despite the indifferent air he puts on, she sees the worry behind his actions, the slight hesitation, the moments where his mind wanders back to that night. Now, Glamour was finally starting to come back to his normal, energetic self. It's nice. She runs her fingers through her hair, pulling out dried leaves. “You know, I get that there's a big beast out here, but why do _we _need to be the ones to take care of it?”

“Because we're super strong and cool and it'll be easy, duh. And fun.”

“That's not what I mean,” Illya sighs. “I mean, why aren't the others coming with us? If it's a big monster, I'm sure Icarus would want to tag along. Plus, Hana and Arel wouldn't let you go by yourself.”

Glamour shakes his head. “I went back to the inn, but I couldn't find anybody. Weird, huh?”

“Yeah,” Illya mutters, thinking. “Weird.”

Glamour holds up a hand, stopping Illya suddenly. “Wait. See that?” Illya looks down. There's a splash of blood, and the ground looks like it was recently disturbed.

“Yeah, I see it.” The tracks are the same ones they'd seen earlier. Three long clawed digits, twice the size of her hand. She didn't want to admit it, but they certainly did look a lot like chicken footprints.

Moving at a snail's pace, the two of them pay special attention to their surroundings; scratched marks in the earth, more splashes of blood, small overturned trees, slashed branches. Glamour exhales, not noticing he'd been holding his breath. “Whatever it is, it looks like it's been fighting something.”

“The question is-”

“How awesome was the fight and why weren't we there to see it?”

“... I was going to say 'what was it fighting?'”

“Oh yeah, that too.” Glamour continues on, not entirely cognizant of the immense danger he may be in. Illya follows, vowing to keep this dummy safe no matter what.

The pair travels along the woods for another ten minutes, detailing the forest as they go, adjusting their positions to follow the very obvious trail of destruction left behind in their target's wake.

“Shh.” Illya stops, craning her head to hear. 

Glamour turns around. “What? What's up?”

“Do you hear that?” Illya strains her senses as far as she can. She motions for Glamour to join.

Glamour squints. “It sounds like... like...”

Both of them perk up at the same time, realizing what they're hearing. “Shouting!”

They rush through the forest, not caring about being heard or trying to get a quiet strategic advantage anymore. The destruction in the forest gets more severe as they fly through. The woods become denser, obscuring their immediate vision. They rush faster, the voices growing louder as they run. Two of them. No. Three of them? Spurred by the same noble goal to help those in need, they speed along, praying they're not too late. There's a thick canopy of foliage in front of them, but the voices are so close; they must be on the other side. Just as the two of them are about to break through, Illya hears one of the voices, louder than the others. She frowns.  _Don't tell me..._

Glamour and Illya break into the clearing in the forest and stop dead in their tracks. They can scarcely believe what they're seeing.

A nine foot tall avian creature looms above them. Its plumage – marred with several dark red bloody streaks – is bright blue, fringed with purple. The creature's gray beak doesn't curve normally like a beak typically does: the top of the beak spreads out upwards and downwards, curving into a wide arc with points at the ends. It looks like its face had been replaced by a razor sharp axe. And yet, that's barely the second most astonishing thing in the area.

The axebeak monster's wings are tied down on either side with thick ropes, and it struggles against them with a rabid fervor. Both Icarus and Arel flank the beast, holding down the ropes with all their might, shouting incomprehensibly. A small girl rides on its back, trying her absolute best not to get bucked off by the wild beast, admittedly doing a commendable job.

“Hana,” Icarus yells, “I don't know if trying to tame this thing was such a good idea after all!”

“That's what I've been saying this whole time!” Arel yells back.

“Shush, you two!” Hana shouts, her voice undulating up and down as the creature bounces her around. “I've almost got it, I swear! Just a little longer, it's gonna tire itself out!”

“Oh, so that's where everybody else was,” Glamour says casually. He takes off toward them. “Hey, pass me a rope!”

Illya facepalms, turns, and starts heading back to the inn.


	21. Treasure

The entire party gathers around the common room table, stuffed from another hearty meal, courtesy of Emile's inn.

“So,” Icarus says, using a claw to pick the gristle from his teeth, “what do you guys think is at the top of the tower? What kind of treasure?”

“Why bring this up all of a sudden?” Arel asks.

“No reason, just thinking about it. It's nice to have a goal to shoot for, right? Something to drive you, to get you up early in the morning.”

“Like, super magic powers,” Glamour says without hesitating. “We beat that whole tower, they're gonna give us like, laser eyes and stuff. We'll be super strong.”

“Why do you say that?” Hana asks.

“This is probably our test to be legendary heroes. They already threw us a parade just for _getting in_, you know? So whatever we get after _that_ has to be totally bonkers.”

“Well, we didn't get any powers for getting this far,” Icarus says. “So it's probably not that.”

“Hey, I definitely feel stronger,” Glamour says, flexing his arm. “When the chips are down, I feel this _surge_ of energy. My body feels extra light and fast and strong.”

Arel nods. “Yeah, sometimes I just feel this burst of magical energy when I need it the most. It happened in the arena. I'd never felt anything like it before.”

“Yeah, that can't be a coincidence,” Illya agrees. “I felt it too, fighting that demon in that astral dimension place.”

“Me too,” says Hana, smiling. “Glad I wasn't the only one.”

“Well, magic must be nice, just coming to your rescue whenever it's convenient,” Icarus retorts, scoffing. “_I_ haven't felt anything weird since we started climbing the tower.”

“What about that thing you do where you fly up and shoot people in the face after you blind them?” Hana asks. “That looks pretty crazy.

Icarus waves a hand. “Nah, I always did that. Used to be my signature move.”

“Well, I hadn't seen it before we started fighting in the arena,” Illya says skeptically.

“Cause I didn't need it! I only break it out when things look bad,” Icarus says with a nod. “If I just used it willy-nilly, people would start to catch on, and it'd lose it's impact. Wouldn't work anymore.”

“Is that right?” Hana shoots back. Everybody looks at Icarus disbelievingly.

“Bah, forget you guys,” he says with a wave. “Anyway, the treasure isn't magic powers.”

“What?” Glamour groans. “Why not?”

“It's gotta be gold. Remember the slogan on the front of the arena? 'Whatever doesn't kill you doesn't make you enough money'? I bet the arena _is_ the tower,” Icarus says, determinedly pounding his fist on the table. “You fight the strongest, meanest bastards around, and when you finally get to the top, they shower you with coins.”

“No,” Illya responds, thinking hard. “My brother climbed that tower, and he came back different. Whatever is at the top of that tower, I don't think it's some normal kind of treasure.”

“What do you think it is, then?” Arel asks.

Illya's quiet for a few moments, humming. Finally she settles on, “I don't think it matters.”

Icarus scoffs. “Of course it matters! That's why we're climbing the dang thing in the first place. We've gotta get whatever's at the top.”

Illya shakes her head. “That's not why  _I'm_ climbing it. Sometimes you need to climb something just to say that you did. Because it's there. And maybe that's enough.”

A few moments pass before Hana speaks, a bit quieter. “I think that whatever is at the top is something we're not supposed to know. I don't know your brother that well, but he seems strong. Strong enough to climb the tower. And if getting to the top of the tower was enough to change him that much, maybe it's something that could push us toward that same fate.”

Everybody is silent, some worry creasing their brows. Hana picks up on the mood of the room. “But you know, you should ignore me. I'm just thinking out loud...”

Hana trails off, the rest of them reassessing their own motives, their own beliefs, their own strengths.

“I hope it's jelly beans,” Glamour says.

Arel can't help but laugh out loud, breaking the tension. “Yeah, I hope it's jelly beans too.”

And even though a few of them did not admit it, a small part of all of them secretly wished it would, indeed, be jelly beans.


	22. Ghost

The night is late, and dark. The full moon lies hidden behind the clouds which drift in and out, allowing faint splashes of moonlight to illuminate the ground before being snuffed out once again. Illya spends her time in the common room, alone, reading a book. The others are all in their bedrooms, asleep, or too quiet to hear. Not even Emile is behind the counter like he usually is, polishing his favorite glass.

A sudden scraping sound deters Illya's attention for a moment. Confused, she looks up from her reading, taking stock of the room. She isn't sure, but the chair across from her may have moved an inch backwards. Maybe it was just her imagination. _Yes, that must be it_, she thinks to herself. _Why would a chair move all by itself?_ She returns to her book, trying to ignore the creeping doubts in her mind.

Another scrape. Illya's attention shoots up, back at the chair that she heard make the last noise. She's sure now, the chair has moved at least three inches since she last looked. Her heart begins to pound, the sound of blood rushing in her ears. Her mouth is dry. She closes her book, rising to grab something to drink behind the bar.

She lets herself in behind the counter. _Emile surely won't mind this one time. His drink menu is so cheap anyway._ She procures a small glass and a shaker, intending to fix herself up something very strong and sweet. She turns her back to select the right mixtures of alcohols from the liqueur shelf.

_Crash!_

The sound of breaking glass sends a jolt of electricity up her spine. Her blood feels ice cold. She turns, slowly, to face the counter. Surely enough, the glass had fallen onto the floor, shattering. She's absolutely sure she didn't do that by accident. Illya's eyes search the room frantically for a logical explanation for the dark feeling that had worked its way into her gut.

Then, from the silence comes a  _crunch_ , like somebody grinding their foot into the glass shards.

“Ghost!” Illya yells, jumping and sliding over the entire counter. “There's a fucking ghost in here! Everybody up!” She pounds on each of the bedroom doors, trying to get as many people awake as possible.

Arel is the first to arrive, quickly trailed by Glamour, wielding his rapier. Glamour whips around, nearly hitting Illya. “Ghost! Where? I wanna kill a ghost.”

As Glamour flails, Arel tries to calm him down. “Hey, watch where you swing that. Can you even stab a ghost?”

Yawning, Hana trudges out of her room. “With magical weapons? Yes, you can stab a ghost.” She looks around. “It's probably invisible, though. A lot of ghosts like to be invisible when they're not directly attacking something.”

Illya looks around at all of them, simply relived to not be alone. “Well, overall, I do feel a bit safer now. I didn't think you'd all believe me, to be honest.”

“I'm a little iffy on ghosts, to tell the truth,” Arel says. “Not that I don't believe you, but, I've never seen a ghost myself, so...”

“I just think killing a ghost sounds like a fun time,” Glamour says, waving his sword with a bit more regard for the safety of everyone in the room. “Do they just evaporate when they die? Turn into goo? Maybe they turn into a bunch of little smaller ghosts.”

Hana shrugs. “Stranger things have happened. Now, what has the ghost done to you? Possession? Visions? Draining your life force?”

Illya looks taken aback. “Life force? Heavens, no. It simply moved a few things around. I'm quite alright, if not a bit shaken.”

Hana clears her throat, still not fully awake. “Hold on, I have something.” She walks back into her room and shuts the door. After a minute, she reemerges holding a rectangular wooden board. Placing it on the table, she waves for the others to sit down beside her. The board is marked with two rows of letters from A to Z, and a row of numbers in a line at the bottom, from zero to nine. The top left pictures a sun with the words “yes” beside it; in the opposite corner, a moon with the words “no”.

“A spirit board?” Illya asks with a nervous laugh. “These don't actually work, do they?”

Hana smiles, pulling out a hand-sized, triangular piece of wood, with a circle cut out on one end, large enough to contain one digit on the board. “You'd be surprised at the practical applications of a spirit board in action.” She places the triangular planchette down onto the board. “Now, everyone gather round. We'll get to the bottom of this.”

With some confusion, they all take up seats around the table and place their hands on the planchette as Hana instructs.

“Now,” Hana continues, an air of mystery creeping into her voice. “If this spirit is willing to communicate, we need to decide on a question to ask it. If we can figure out why it's here, we can determine what it wants, appease it, and let it be on its way.”

“Why can't we just stab it?” Glamour asks. “That can be the first question. 'Can-we-stab-you?'”

“Hey, it could be a nice ghost,” Arel says in a chastising tone. “You shouldn't stab people before you meet them properly.”

“Pfft, fine, I _guess_.”

“Well, maybe that can be the first question,” Illya suggests. “Let's ask, 'Are you a nice ghost?'”

Hana nods. Taking the lead, she spells out the question, all of their hands helping to guide the planchette together. After the question is asked, they wait. Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen.

Glamour sighs. “I don't think this ghost is gonna-”

Before he can finish his sentence, the planchette moves. All their hands still resting on it, it slowly glides over to “No”. 

Illya shivers. “Okay, who moved it? Glamour, was it you?”

“Hey, this is Hana's idea, maybe it was her.”

“It was the ghost, you guys,” Hana says, as if she were explaining two plus two. “That's how this works.”

“But it's a bad ghost,” Glamour says. “So we should attack it, right?”

“No, no,” Arel says. “It just told it that it _wasn't_ a _good_ ghost. So technically it could be a morally ambiguous ghost. Or a ghost whose motives are undecided.”

Glamour sighs. “This is getting too complicated. Can we just kill the ghost now?”

“No, let's give it a few more,” Hana says. She moves with purpose: 'Are you a good ghost?'”

The answer comes much quicker this time, moving once again to “No.”

“So, it's not a good ghost or a bad ghost, then,” Arel says decidedly. “So we shouldn't hurt it. It's probably just passing through, hanging out for a bit.”

Illya groans. “This isn't getting us anywhere! I just want to know what it's doing in our house.”

“Maybe we've just been asking the wrong kinds of questions,” Hana says. “I've got one.” She moves the planchette again, with everyone else helping. She spells out, “Where are you from?”

Again, the piece of wood moves by itself. It spells out the letters S-P-A-C-E.

“A space ghost?” Illya asks. “That's very odd. Have you heard of anything like that before, Hana?”

Hana doesn't reply. Something seems to occur to her. With greater speed, she spells out, “What is your name?”

With baited breath, all of them watch as the pieces moves, much slowly than it had before. It stops and starts, almost moving with hesitation. It gradually moves to the letter “T”, and pauses for a few seconds. Then it moves again, to the letter “A”.

Hana, seemingly satisfied, takes her hands off the planchette and crosses her arms. The others look confused, and slowly withdraw their own hands. To no one in particular, Hana calls out, “Go on, finish it.”

To all their surprise, the piece moves by itself across the board, very very slowly. It comes to rest at the “N”. By the time it gets to the “Z”, everybody in the room, still a bit puzzled, seems to be coming to the same conclusion, which is confirmed as the planchette rests on the final “A”.

“Okay, don't keep us waiting, then,” Hana calls out again. His arm still on the spirit board, Tanza suddenly appears, standing in front of them, as if he had been there all along and they'd all simply failed to notice.

The oread only stands over them because they're all sitting down. Barely clearing five feet, Tanza still makes quite the impression. His featureless translucent crystal body – covered only by an intricate shawl – fades from a sky blue at the top, to an emerald green towards his legs. His eyes glow sizzling pink, merely shining from his angular face, their glowing light refracting off into his defined crystalline jaw and brow.

“You weren't supposed to notice I was here,” Tanza says with an even, monotone voice. The natural tone of his speech seems to reverberate with the frequency of his own body's structure, echoing through the air with bright ring when he talks.

“Really?” Illya asks incredulously. “You could have fooled me.”

“Yes. But I did not.”

“Tanza,” Arel begins with a sigh. “Why are you here?”

“Well, I'm a time cop.” Tanza flashes his badge. “You may have forgotten. It has been a number of days since we have last seen each other.”

“We know you're a time cop, Tanza,” Arel says. “We're all very proud. But what _exactly _are you doing here?”

“It's standard procedure to do a follow up on the subject of a D37-X after retrieval,” Tanza explains.

“A what?” Glamour asks.

“He means Icarus, probably.” Hana says. “So why were you skulking around our house, then? You couldn't have just knocked?”

“I could have. I did not. We are equipped to enter and exit a premises with a small number of occupants without disturbing the inhabitants. The agency prefers to deal with these matters covertly, as not to disturb the target. They often experience mental trauma from their unintended extra-dimensional travels.” Tanza steps backwards, accidentally crunching the glass once again.

“You should work on that,” Illya says lightly.

Tanza leaves two hundred gold on the table. “I apologize. This should cover it. I do not know how much drinking cups cost. We don't use them in inter-dimensional space.”

“Then what do you use?”

“That's classified,” Tanza says, straightening his posture. “I've already said too much. I may visit you again. Please, have a wonderful night.”

Electricity surrounds Tanza's crystalline body, glowing bright blue. He takes a fist and slams it against his chest, causing a rift in time and space to open up, swallowing him in a swirling void. Tanza disappears as quickly as he came.

Everyone at the table blinks, staring at each other. Suddenly Icarus bursts through the door, his gun in his hand, sleep in his eyes.

“I'm here, where's the ghost?” he says, half awake. “Don't worry, guys. You're safe.” He yawns.

“Never mind,” Illya says. “It was just Tanza.”

Icarus squints at her, still not fully awake. “What the fuck is a Tanza?"


	23. Ancient

Arel sits against the tree that Illya had planted nearly a week ago. Thanks to the magical ash from the cards that Icarus had burned up, the tree has already grown to resemble a sturdy apple tree. Its branches and wide leaves spread outward to provide ample shade to read under, and Arel relishes the relative peace and quiet, feeling the wind on his cheeks. The tree’s lush green leaves are dotted with dozens of small bright blue blooms that fade to white toward the tips.

Just then, Hana comes out of the inn, also holding a book. She laughs. “Looks like we had the same idea. It’s a nice day, isn’t it?”

“Beautiful,” Arel says, grinning. “What were you looking forward to reading, before I interrupted your plans?”

She holds up her book. It’s an extremely worn tome. Stray papers stick out from the sides at various angles. “Ancient compendium of plants. I thought I could find something useful about this one.”

“Oh, that’s funny.” Arel holds up his own book. In much better condition, it’s a sleeker tome of the same title, _Ancient Fawn and Fauna of a Forgotten Age_. “Looks like we had _exactly_ the same idea. It’s a later edition. I spent some of the money that Tanza gave us to pick up a gently used copy this morning.”

“Oh, I’ve had this one kicking around for a while. Might still have something useful in it.” She gestures to the space beside Arel. “You mind if I join you?”

“Oh, go right ahead.” Hana sits down beside him, their shoulders nearly touching. They spend the next hour reading in comfortable silence, enjoying the mutual company. Arel scribbles a few notes and copies a few images onto a pad of paper, keeping track of relevant information to cross-check for later. Hana flips back and forth, scanning quickly, committing as much information to memory as possible. Occasionally one of them leans over and points out a passage, noting particularly interesting plants and subtle differences between the copies of their books. The natural world adds an element of background noise to their readings. The chirping of birds accent the soft hush of gentle breezes that shake the leaves above them.

Hana closes her book and massages her temples. Arel notices. “Hey, don’t strain yourself. We’ve got plenty of time for research.”

“Yeah, I know,” Hana says, breathing deeply. “I just get these headaches sometimes. They come and go.”

“Oh, I might have something for that.” Arel rummages in his bag, pulling out a small salve. “Rub a little bit of this on your forehead, just a small amount. Illya gave this to me, as thanks for convincing Glamour to move that terrible chandelier into our room. It should help.”

Hana hesitates for a moment, but dips her finger into it. It smells like honey and mint. She dabs it on her forehead, spreading it into a thin layer. “Thanks. It’s weird, I usually only get these headaches when I think about my past.”

Arel puts the cover back on the salve, stowing it. “I don’t think you’ve mentioned a lot about your past, actually. You did say that time was, um, wonky for you? I’m still not sure what that means.”

Hana shakes her head. “Me neither, to be honest. Things are kind of cloudy, you know? Like, echoes of somebody else’s memories are overlapping onto my own. Or maybe my _own_ memories are overlapping on each other.” She exhales sharply. “Sorry, this all sounds crazy.”

Arel looks away, unsure of the right thing to say to comfort her. “Well, it can’t be crazier than half the stuff that’s already happened to us, right?”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Hana stares off into the distance.

An awkward silence settles between them. Trying to change the subject, Arel leans over to Hana, flipping his book around. “Hey, look at this.” It’s an image of a small flower, exactly like the ones they’re sitting under. “Look familiar?”

Hana’s interest is peaked. She fixes on the new information as if nothing had happened. “Oh, good find! What’s it say?”

“There’s not a lot of information about it,” Arel says, happy to have distracted Hana from her existential crisis for a moment. “The book says it’s a very magically conducive plant called the ‘unozei’ fruit.” Arel flips the page, showing a few more pictures. The fruit is round; when split open, the flesh on the inside forms the pattern of a star. “It’s very rare, it only flowers once, it hardly produces any seeds, and it only produces fruit when it’s planted near a strong magical leyline. The fruit has a few obscure alchemical uses, but the real interesting part is here; when eaten, the unozei fruit is supposed to induce minor visions. Some early civilizations claimed that it connected them with their past lives, or even alternate selves.” Arel looks up at Hana. “That’s wild, right? I’ve heard of reincarnation, but other versions of you, somewhere else? Seems a bit far-fetched.”

“Maybe,” Hana says, her headache creeping back up. “Unozei, you said? The root of that word is derived from early gnomish, I believe. Slight orcish influence. It has a connotation of ‘immediate’, but also ‘time’ and, roughly translated, something like ‘gathered together.’”

Arel takes another looks at the book. “Well, it’s not like it’ll necessarily bear fruit, anyway. It has to be near a powerful magical leyline.”

“It might, actually,” Hana says. “Dragmira is supposed to be a source of great power. Strong energies converge at the tower, you know. Maybe the plant can tap into some of that.”

“Hopefully,” Arel says with a far off look. “I’d like to try it.”

Hana flips open her own book to a similar page. She finds the image of the open fruit, tracing her finger around the edges of the star shape. “Yeah. Me too,” she says quietly, too low for Arel to hear.


	24. Dizzy

In front of the inn, the party is gathered in a large circle. Arel crosses his arms, looking around at the others. He fidgets in place. Icarus and Glamour are stretching out their legs, as if they were preparing for a light jog. Hana licks her finger and tests the wind speed. Illya is positioned between them, waiting expectantly.

“All I'm saying is that this seems a bit excessive,” Arel explains to nobody in particular.

“Don't be such a party pooper, Arel,” Hana says. “This seems like a fair way to divide up the rest of the gold that Tanza gave us.”

“Why can't we just, I don't know, distribute it evenly?”

Booooring,” Glamour says, jumping from foot to foot. “This is way more fun.”

“I still don't see how it's fair, though.” Arel looks at all of them in disbelief. “Is it me? Am _I_ the one going crazy here?” He motions to Illya. “Come on, why did _you_ agree to this?”

“It's good practice for my elemental form,” Illya says offhandedly. Arel raises an eyebrow. “Okay, fine. I just wanna see what happens, okay? Everybody needs an outlet, you know.”

“Wow. I give up. Everybody's insane.”

“So,” Illya says, rubbing her hands together. “Who's going first?”

“Me!” Hana and Icarus both say at the same time. They glare at each other.

“Only one of you can go first,” Illya says, sighing. “Boulder, parchment, shears. Winner gets to be first.”

Icarus and Hana turn to each other. “Three, two, one, shoot!” Hana extends a fist out to him, while Icarus sticks out two fingers. Icarus groans. She knocks his fingers out of the way. “Boulder beats shears,” she says smugly.

“Yeah, yeah,” Icarus mutters. He holds out a hand, looking at Hana and motioning to Illya “Ladies first.”

Grinding her feet into the earth, Hana slides her goggles over her face. She drops low to the ground, adopting the stance of a sprinter at a starting line. “Rev up those engines, Illya! I'm ready when you are.”

Smiling pleasantly, Illya's face is suddenly obscured behind a wall of wind, kicking up dust and stray leaves. Her body seems to fade into the very air itself, which grows in size and intensity as the wind begins to funnel into a swirling vortex. The abrupt whirlwind causes everyone to stumble forward and reposition their footing, lest they be dragged into the whirling mass of Illya's air elemental form.

“Remember,” Hana shouts over the sound of the whipping wind. “If anybody passes out, Illya gets the gold. So don't stay in there longer than you can handle. Arel! You're in charge of keeping track of the time.”

Arel rolls his eyes and produces a small pocket watch, turning it to show her.

“Hey, worry about yourself, Hana,” Glamour scoffs. “Whatever time you get, I'll beat it with my hands behind my back.”

Hana smiles from the corner of her mouth. “I'll remember you said that.”

Without another word, she takes off running into the whirlwind. With a leap, she disappears into the wind. Everybody looks on with baited breath, wondering when she'll come back out. Everybody counts the seconds in their heads. Five seconds. Ten seconds. Fifteen. Then, Hana's body comes tumbling out, thrown five feet or so from Illya. She somehow lands on her feet, but she stumbles clumsily backwards, falling into a bush and lays there, motionless, entirely obscured by leaves and branches.

“Eighteen seconds,” Arel sighs, still unimpressed with the whole activity.

A thumbs up shoots out from the side of the bush. “I'm fine, don't worry!” she says in a shaky voice.

Icarus pulls his own goggles over his eyes. “Wish me luck!”

“I am!” Glamour shouts. Icarus takes off running into Illya's tornado. Glamour leans over to Arel, whispering, “He didn't specify what kind, so I'm wishing him bad luck.” Arel laughs, shaking his head.

Icarus seems to hold on for almost as long as Hana before he comes flying out, spiraling wildly through the air with one wing outstretched, corkscrewing right into the top of a tree, where he lands with a thud and a rustle. He yells a couple times, hitting branches on the way down, and collapses on the ground, belly up, his head spinning.

“Uuugh. My stupid wings got caught in the air current. No fair.”

“What was his time?” Glamour asks.

“Sixteen seconds.”

“Woo!” Hana pumps a fist from the bushes. “Still the champ.”

Glamour glances at Arel. “You gonna take a shot at it?”

“Not really. There's only one tempest I want to be _that_ close to.” Arel's otter familiar sticks her head out from his robes, licking his cheek. He smiles and gives her a little scratch under the chin.

“Hey, suit yourself.” Glamour takes off his cape and hands it to Arel without looking, eyes fixed on the raging whirlwind in front of him. He sprints and dives in headfirst. Five, ten, fifteen seconds, and then he shoots out from the top of the tornado, using his powers to brake in mid air, stopping himself from flying directly into the side of the inn.

Out of breath, he calls to Arel. “Time!”

“Sixteen seconds!” he calls back. “Sorry, you and Icarus tied.”

“No way!” Glamour shouts, floating back down to reattach his cape. “I want a rematch.”

Icarus stands up and wobbles over to them. “Yeah, this isn't settled yet.”

Hana pokes her head out the of the bush. “No, I think I won, actually.”

“This isn't about _winning_,” Icarus shoots back. “It's about being the _best_.”

Arel begins to say something, but thinks better of it.

“Okay then,” Galmour says, cracking his knuckles. “Round two for second place?”

Icarus grins with a throaty chuckle. “You're on.”

They both take off towards the raging storm once again.


	25. Tasty

“You spent _all_ the money on this?” Illya asks, incredulously. “Why? What would compel you to spend over a hundred gold on a single cup?”

“Hey,” Hana says defensively. “It's a nice cup.”

It's a very nice cup. It's made of finely polished silver and gold, engraved with fine angular geometric designs, and embellished with copper accents. Small jewels every color of the rainbow dot the exterior at key points where the shapes in the designs converge. If this cup had been a piece in a noble's art collection, or in a set alongside other, just as suitably fancy dishware, it might have been tasteful. Sitting, now, on the top of Emile's wooden bar counter, it is extremely gaudy.

“Seems like a big waste of money to me,” Icarus says. “You know what _I_ would have used that money on?”

“Nothing this cool, I'll tell you that,” Hana says, confident. “Besides, Emile needed a new cup, anyway. Tanza broke one of them when he was snooping around. I think it's only fair that it gets replaced.”

“You could have picked up a dozen cups for like, a few silver,” Icarus says, disappointed that all that money couldn't go to something more fun. “You didn't need to break the bank on just one.”

“No, I think this is good buy,” Glamour chimes in. “I mean, _look_ at it. Whoever made this thing obviously had fantastic taste. It's the shiniest thing in the building, hands down.” He flips his hair. “Besides me of course.”

Arel picks the cup up and examines it closely. “Well, it's magical, obviously.”

Everyone besides Hana perks up, leaning in with renewed interest.

“You could have led with that,” Illya says, eyeing the cup sharply now.

Hana scoops up the cup, keeping it away from her ever-volatile company. “Hey now, you don't even know what it does yet. At least let me show it off before you guys end up breaking it somehow.” She snaps her fingers. “Emile, could I get some water, please?”

The cup of water appears before them in a clear glass, scarcely before Hana can even finish her sentence. She grabs the cup in her off hand. “Thank you, Emile.”

“In the future, snapping is not necessary,” Emile says in a low voice. “I find it a bit rude.”

Hana blushes. “Oh, yeah, sorry.” Composing herself, she gestures theatrically with the two glasses to her companions. She lightly shakes the water cup. “For my first trick, I'd like to get an audience member to come up to the stage.”

All of them look awkwardly at each other, now much more hesitant to try the effects of the mysterious magical item.

Hana sighs. “Arel, can you drink the water? I promise it's just water.”

“Alright then.” He steps up and takes the water glass carefully, taking a small drink. He raises his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Mmm, yep. That's water. Amazing.”

“Okay, you're not allowed up on stage any more,” Hana groans. “Shoo, shoo.” She turns the golden cup upside down and shakes it a few times. “Nothing in here. And yet, behold!” She then empties the water into the golden cup and swirls it around, waving her hand with implied mystical power. “Illya, if you would like to be my next assistant,” Hana says, flourishing the golden cup towards her.

“Oh well, what's the worst that can happen?” She brings the cup to her lips and sips the water. Her eyes go completely wide. She stares down at the cup with disbelief. Hana smiles, and the others gather around her with concern.

“What did it do? Is it poison?” Icarus asks, looking frantically between Hana and Illya. “Did it petrify her? Take her soul?”

“No, that's- that's incredible,” Illya finally says in a breathy voice. “The spiced cranberry drink I used to get during the holiday fair. I haven't had this since I was a child. It's even warm!” She takes another gulp, relishing the taste. Illya smiles, her eyes twinkling with nostalgia.

“Hey, give it here, I wanna try,” Glamour says, reaching for it. Illya passes it to him. He takes a deep drink, and he's seized with the same reaction Illya just experienced. “It's different! This is that fizzy drink that my mom's alchemists whipped up. Remember, Arel? We stayed up for three days straight drinking this stuff so we could beat Tales of Illumina. That final boss was _impossible_.”

“Yeah, you were practically bouncing off the walls,” Arel laughs, taking the cup. He looks inside before bring the cup to his lips. His eyes sparkle. “Yeah, wow. That really brings back memories.”

“Hey, give it here,” Icarus says, putting his hand out. “You guys are making this sound too good to be true.” After another deep drink from the cup, Arel hands it over. Icarus knocks it back immediately, but he sputters and coughs, spitting out the drink right away. “Ah! Wow, how does it burn that much? I didn't think this thing could make alcohol.”

“Why, what did you get?” Illya asks.

Icarus wipes his mouth. Emile frowns, cleaning up the mess he's made on the counter. “It's a mixed drink called 'Oblivion's Howl'. Awful, awful drink. Can't name half the stuff in it. But whenever we landed a big haul, the captain used to dock, drag everybody to her favorite bar and order a round for each of us. Some of the best nights of my life were in that bar. Terrible alcohol, though.”

With an absentminded grin, Hana stares into space.“When I drank from it, I got to taste my old master's personal blend of tea. The leaves were picked from four corners of the world. She was very proud of it.” Hana smiles. “So, do you guys still think the cup was a waste of money?”

“Hey,” Glamour says, the caffeine from his drink starting to kick in. “I knew this was a solid investment the moment I saw it. Actually, do you think I could borrow it for a bit? I missed the energy buzz I used to get from this.”

“Oh no you don't,” Arel says, taking the cup and keeping it at arm's length from Glamour. “Not again. There's a reason your mom banned you from this stuff.”

“Arellll, come ooonnnnn, you can't do this to meeee.” Glamour desperately tries reaching for it, flailing and missing.

“Well that's no fair,” Illya says. “You two can't hog it all the time.”

Arel turns to Hana for some kind of help, but she just shrugs. “Go nuts,” she says. “It's for everybody to use.”

Glamour jumps to his feet. “Alright then, if I can survive forty seconds inside the whirlwind, you have to let me use it for the next week.”

Illya scoffs. “You're on.”

In a commotion, the entire party runs outside, ready to support, jeer, or just watch. The inn is empty in a matter of seconds.

That is, empty besides the barkeep, Emile, still washing his favorite pint glass. The jeweled cup stands in front of him, disregarded in the flurry of happy activity triggered by the rush of homesick memories. He stands, stoically, alone in the building. Then his eyes wander down to the small cup, a little liquid still left inside it.

Emile glances side to side. He puts down his glass for a moment and picks up the cup, swallowing the last of the liquid. A moment passes. His lip trembles into the smallest smile as he wipes the faintest tear from the corner of his eye. Bittersweet. He sighs, tucking the cup underneath the bar for now.

_Yeah, those kids are gonna be alright._


	26. Dark

“Are you sure about this?” Hana asks, struggling to hold a quarterstaff taller than her. “Seems kind of excessive, don’t you think?”

“Since when has that ever stopped Icarus?” Illya says, gripping a stick of her own.

“He doesn’t do anything by halves, that's for sure,” Arel chimes in, looking on anxiously.

Glamour twirls his own quarterstaff with a flourish. “Honestly? Not a great strategy for someone who only uses half his brain.”

Between them all, Icarus stands with his arms out, feeling the air with large sweeping motions. A black blindfold covers his eyes. “Look, I wouldn’t invite you all out here if I didn’t think it was important. I can’t be getting rusty with all this time off.”

“I’d hardly call this time off,” Illya sighs. “Since we’ve been here, I think we’ve still been in mortal danger pretty much constantly, thanks to you.”

“Hey, what’d I do?”

“Well, let’s see.” Illya starts counting on her fingers. “You stabbed your own hand with a knife, almost blew up the inn, incinerated a deck of many things, almost fell off a roof, and tried to tame a wild axebeak. And all of this was just in the last two weeks.”

“Hey,” Icarus shouts. He tries to point an accusing finger at Illya, guessing at where she is. He misses, and points at a very confused Arel. “Don’t forget the day that _you_ knocked me unconscious in a sparring match. And made Hana cover the nearest square mile with a foot of snow.” Hana walks up and adjusts Icarus’s arm so he’s pointing at Illya. “Thank you Glamour.”

Illya’s face reddens a bit. “You can’t blame me for needing to stand up for myself in this crazy group.” She hefts her quarterstaff. “Now are we gonna beat you, or what?”

Icarus centers himself. “Okay, I’m ready. One at a time.”

Everybody looks over to Arel, who sighs. “How did I end up being the referee for this?”

“Because you didn’t want to beat Icarus up with a wooden stick for some reason,” Glamour says.

“Gee, I wonder why.” Arel rolls his eyes. He raises his hand. “Okay, Illya, you go first.”

“What!?” Icarus yells. “Do you _have_ to start with her? At least ease me into it.”

“Let’s just get this over with,” Arel says. He brings his hand down. “Go!”

Illya comes in hard and fast before Icarus can react, hitting him across the chest. The wind is knocked out of him, and he struggles to right himself. With effort, he stops himself from totally keeling over and raises his arms to deflect the incoming blows. Using only the vibrations in the ground, the sound of Illya’s movement, and a calculated idea of where she is based off the last attack, he dodges one strike, and then another. She tries for a two-handed blow across the chest, but Icarus manages to stop it with both his forearms. He winces, feeling them take the impact, and he knows they’ll be sore tomorrow morning.

“Come on, is that all you got?” Icarus flexes his hand in a “come here” motion, egging her on. With gusto, Illya reapplies her efforts, coming in for another assault. She whips her staff around in a flurry of attacks, but Icarus moves with surprising grace, using his arms to mitigate most of the damage, if not stop it completely. With a final effort, Illya jabs out to his chest, thudding hard against his upper body. He stumbles backwards, and Illya uses the opportunity to flick her staff up and catch him on the chin. She tries to retract her weapon, but the he grabs it from her unbalanced grasp and yanks it, tossing the weapon on the ground behind him.

“Jeez, you didn’t hold back, did you?” Icarus says, doubled over to catch his breath.

“You didn’t do so bad yourself, actually.” Illya steps back. “Glamour, would you like a turn?”

“Hey, I thought I was supposed to be directing this?” Arel protests.

Glamour is already stepping up. “I’m getting pumped up now! You gotta put in me, coach.”

Arel tries to hold in a smile. “Alright, alright, you can go next. Icarus, are you ready?”

Icarus stands tall, flexing his arms down to either side. He takes a huge breath in, and then out. “Yeah, I can take it. Come at me.”

“Alright then.” Arel looks a bit nervously between Icarus and Glamour. “Three, two- hey, Glamour, no magic!”

Glamour is too focused to hear what Arel is saying. He finishes his spell, the burst of shining light erupting from his hand and washing over his body. “Haste!” His eyes flare with a sudden intensity. He darts forward with an inhuman speed.

“W-what was tha-” Icarus is interrupted by a whoosh of thick wood hurtling right for his head. He just manages to duck out of the way, the staff nicking the side of his temple. He tries to dodge the other direction, anticipating a second attack, but he’s too slow.

Glamour is a blur, and the others look on in awe. Glamour spins and strikes Icarus sharply on the calf, forcing his knee to buckle. Icarus’s balance is totally thrown off, leaving him wide open. The staff comes back around and impacts Icarus’s ribs, hard. He can feel a bone crack under the force of the blow. Icarus coughs sharply, but he holds his ground, feeling the adrenaline pump into him, blocking out the pain with the thrill of combat. Glamour shifts his weight, coming up with another right-left combo swing, but Icarus raises his forearms to block just in time, sending him reeling.

Glamour hops from side to side, his arms and legs moving with an endless font of energy. He spins the quarterstaff in his hands, flourishing like a prize fighter.

“That looked pretty bad,” Arel calls out to Icarus. “Should we call it here?”

“No way! That was nothing. I can still go another round.” Icarus stands fully upright and wipes the corner of his mouth, feeling the blood pooling there. He spits on the ground, a thick red globule. “If I can’t even get through this, how are you guys supposed to rely on me when you really need me to take a hit?”

Glamour’s fists pumping to an inaudible beat, he looks expectantly between Arel and Icarus, waiting for a sign to keep going. Arel waves a hand. “Go ahead, I guess.”

“Here comes round two!” Glamour yells, surging toward Icarus with the staff trailing behind him. The shout makes it very easy for Icarus to determine Glamour’s position, and he readies the timing for each hit, anticipating Glamour’s technique. Sure enough, Glamour goes in for another headshot. Ducking below it, Icarus also guesses the next attack, jumping over the low sweep that Glamour had planned. Unfortunately, Icarus didn’t anticipate Glamour leaving the edge of the staff under Icarus’s feet, causing him to land with an unbalanced twist. With Icarus stumbling, Glamour takes advantage, driving the end of the pole into Icarus’s chest, pushing him back with the full length of the weapon. In a final burst, Glamour puts the weight of his whole body into one giant overhead swing, bringing the weighty quarterstaff down directly onto Icarus’s head.

The hit lands clean with a resounding crack. The others are silent as Icarus’s arms go slack, and he falls backward onto the ground, head spinning. Glamour tosses the weapon on the ground before him and walks away. “And that’s how it’s done.”

“Good job, you beat up a blind guy,” Hana quips.

“Yeah, but did you see that last combo? It was like _bam-bam, whack!_” Glamour mimes the moves, spinning in place.

An extremely shaky Icarus staggers to feet. “O-okay Hana. You’re up, haha.”

“You can’t be serious. You can barely stand.” Arel says. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”

“No, I’m so good,” he says as he wobbles left and right, trying not to fall over. “Just send the last one over, it’ll be easy. What’s her face? The tiny one. Yeah? It’s fine.”

Arel resigns himself to the stupid plan, like he does most of the time, begrudgingly. “Okay, if you’re sure. But just because she’s small, it doesn’t mean she can’t beat you up.”

“Hey, I’d rather fight ten duck sized horses than one horse sized duck, y’know?”

“Uh, not really? Hana, you good?”

“Yup,” she calls back. “Start the countdown, Arel.”

Arel shakes his head. “You guys are all crazy. Three, two, one, go!”

Icarus darts from side to side, listening hard, feeling the air. _I’m not gonna get taken out by a little shrimp of a kid, no way_, he thinks to himself. _Not after the beating I’ve taken so far_.

“Rhyno!” Hana calls out.

“Rhyno?” Icarus says, his momentum nearly halted.

“Oh no.” Illya, Glamour, and Arel say in unison.

A charging rhinoceros materializes and sprints for Icarus, who feels the sudden heavy stomping of four giant feet headed right for him. He lowers his blindfold just as the horn makes contact, lifting the unfortunate wyvaran with the power of a two-ton charge. Every bone in his body ripples from end to end, gripped with the inertial force that feels like a dozen electric bolts shot down his nervous system. For rhyno, it’s like flipping an egg sunny side up.

Icarus’s limp body sails off into the distance, his wings fluttering half-heartedly. Over a hundred feet away, he crashes into someone’s roof, breaking through the tiles, leaving a vaguely Icarus-shaped hole in the house.

Arel sighs. “Hana. We said we wouldn’t use any magic.”

She points an accusatory finger at Glamour, his haste spell just wearing off now. “But _he_ got to cast a spell! Besides, Rhyno technically isn’t magical.”

“That’s true, technically,” Illya says.

Arel hangs his head and starts stomping off. “Fine, I’ll go get him.”


	27. Coat

The auction house is a narrow building in the commerce district of Dragmiria, tucked off to the side in a row of more practical businesses like cobblers and tailors. Night has fallen, and the room is lit by rows and rows of bright candles in copper sconces. The floor is mostly covered with a deep red, weathered carpet, not quite stretching all the way across the room, revealing the dusty, scuffed oak paneling in places underneath. Tapestries and paintings are thrown up here and there, the interior decorator clearly ignorant of the concepts of visual clutter and negative space. A row of benches line up to face the front of the room, where a low podium sits atop a raised stage platform, backed by a thick red curtain. Where the benches don’t fully extend to either side of the wall, an assortment of mismatched chairs linger at the end of each row. All the seating is made of a shiny, varnished, deep brown wood. The chairs and benches are unusually clean, given the rest of the building.

Glamour guides Hana in with a flourish. “Welcome to the Perennial Pocket! I like to come here sometimes to hunt for deals. You never know what you’ll find. They have a little bit of everything, you know?”

Hana scans every corner, taking in all the little details. “Thanks for bringing me here. I’m very curious to see what kind of trinkets they have. But it’s kinda small for an auction house, you think?”

“Nah, it’s fine. This is a niche thing. Not many people know about it.” Glamour holds up a finger to his mouth. “So keep it on the down low, okay? I don’t need new competition.”

“Is this where you got that terri- I mean _great_ chandelier?”

“Yeah, it is! Man, Arel and I love that chandelier.”

_ He’s half right _ , Hana thinks to herself.

The two of them take a seat near the front and wait for the room to fill up. It doesn’t take a long, and soon the whole hall is bustling with people of all sorts: rich, poor, gaudy, grizzled, and even a few disinterested spectators, simply here for the atmosphere and the background noise while they conduct their own business.

Three knocks resound across the small room, and everybody shushes, the few remaining voices brought to a low whisper. “Oh, it’s starting,” Glamour says excitedly. Hana turns to look, not sure what to expect.

With a descending musical flourish provided by a harp backstage, a small gnomish man bursts through the curtain. His oiled golden hair is slicked back, a row of jeweled hoops play up the side of his left ear, and his facial hair is trimmed to a neat, pointed goatee. His vest and shirt are an eye-popping combination of orange and hot pink silks and treated leathers, and his bright teal pants are studded with square gold rivets down the sides. He holds a diamond tipped cane in one hand, twirling it with practiced ease. “Good to see you again! To my returning guests and new faces alike - of which I see in a few in the audience,” he says, winking at Hana in particular “I humbly entreat you to enjoy the trash and treasures I’ve gathered for you tonight. Feast your eyes and loosen those purse strings! Let it all out here, with the perpetual peddler of peculiar prizes, the Perennial Pocket!” He stands proudly over the crowd - which has burst into a rousing applause - both hands gripping his cane in front of him. Hana grins and claps along, slowly at first, and then faster, matching pace with the others. 

“I will be your gracious host, Inlo Shinepitch,” he says, bowing low. At this distance, Hana sees that his eyes have a faint blue glow to them, around the irises. “And boy, do we have some marvelous items for you tonight. Without further ado, may we present our first piece!” 

Inlo claps twice, and a muscled tiefling woman walks out, over twice the height of the three foot tall gnome. She’s wearing a trim greatcoat, with four polished buttons down either side. The coat shines like metal, with a pearlescent sheen alternating between black and brass. The edges are trimmed with a bright golden fabric. As well, the sleeves are detailed with patterns in golden thread, circling and angling into helices and argyle. The tiefling flexes and turns, showing off the garment with exaggerated poses and a coy smile.

Glamour and Hana both look on with admiration. It’s very shiny.

“This is the Coat of Arms,” Inlo Shinepitch announces. “A stunning piece of invention, if I do say so myself. The interior quite plush and comfortable, and the exterior is exceedingly fashionable. For folks of all sizes, this magical garment will readjust to fit nearly any body type, and accentuate the fine qualities of all the lovely people out in the audience today.” He flashes a smile to the crowd. “Not only that, but what would a coat of arms be without, ahem, the arms?”

On cue, the tiefling extends her right arm in front of her. The fabric on the sleeve suctions to her arm, runs down into her hand, and materializes into a wide sword, the metal shining brass and black, the hilt decorated with a few small gears. She hefts it with a powerful grip, swinging it broadly. The crowd - including Glamour and Hana - gasps in surprise.

“Yes, that’s right, folks! This coat has the power to temporarily transmute itself into any weapon the user desires for a short time. Never be caught in a dark alley without a weapon again! The pinnacle of fashion _and_ function.” The tiefling draws back her arm, and then extends both of them in front of her. The sleeves once again coalesce into her palms, forming a pair of sleek daggers, the same material as the sword. “And since this is the Perennial Pocket, bidding will start at a paltry five hundred gold!”

“Six hundred!”

“Seven fifty!”

“One thousand!”

Glamour takes a moment to recover from the shock. “Fifteen hundred!” he says, holding up his hand.

Hana whispers to him. “Do you even have that much money?”

“Uh, I think so, I’m not sure. But we can pool our gold, right? I need that coat.”

Hana looks right into his eyes. “No. _We_ need that coat.”

“Two thousand,” a voice says from the back. Some people start putting their hands down, muttering.

“That’s two thousand from the back,” Inlo says, directing the auction after the initial flurry of bidding. “Do I hear twenty two hundred?”

Glamour and Hana look at each other, a bit panicked. Hana raises her hand. “Twenty two!”

“That’s twenty two, from the newcomer. Do I hear twenty five?”

“Twenty five,” says the same voice from the back.

“Okay, no way do we have that much gold right now,” Hana whispers.

“It’s fine, we can just borrow it from the others, I’m sure they’ll understand.” Glamour raises his hand before Hana can stop him. “Three thousand!”

The crowd is silent now, waiting to see how this unfolds. Inlo raises an eyebrow. “That’s three thousand from the young man who bought the terrible chandelier last week. Do I hear-”

“Five thousand,” the voice from the back says, not even raising his voice. He doesn’t need to. The whole room has gone quiet.

Five-” Inlo says, choking. “Five thousand gold, to my favorite recurring customer, Cid! Everyone, give him a round of applause for the generosity.” The whole room claps politely. The man in the back, a very thickly built orc, seems unimpressed. “If anybody changes their mind about this coat, I’m sure you’ll be able to swing by Cid’s weapon emporium in the near future and pick it up for a very reasonable trade. Thank you, thank you.”

Cid tosses a large bag of gold onto the stage, takes the Coat of Arms, and leaves the building, evidently not a fan of the crowd and the noise.

Hana and Glamour slump in their seats as the next item is announced - a cracked bust of some famous old dead person - and sigh. “We’re not gonna see else anything that cool tonight, are we?” Hana asks.

Glamour shakes his head. “No, they usually auction away the craziest stuff right away, and Cid always buys it if it’s weapon-related.”

“At least five thousand gold,” Hana mutters, thinking. “We _need_ that coat. Is there any way we could scrounge up that much cash?”

Glamour thinks for a moment. He smiles. “We _could_ see if he’s got any quests for us to take on as payment.”

“And rope the others into it without telling them why?” Hana asks, leaning in with a conspiratorial hush.

The two of them look at each other, and then the door. Simultaneously, they bolt for the exit, pursuing Cid into the night.


	28. Ride

Early in the dark of morning, an hour or two before sunrise, Illya sneaks out of the inn, dressing warmly to keep the chill dew of the night air at bay. Hana, not apt to get much sleep either way, spots the druid leaving the building. Curious, she follows, throwing on a thick furred shawl as she goes.

Hana opens the front door carefully, not sure if she'd like to be seen just yet. She slips through, and shuts it with a quiet click. Out front, Illya jogs in place as she stretches out her arm and leg muscles, bending from side to side to extend her back muscles, and shaking her fingertips to stave off the cold.

Illya suddenly turns and notices Hana. She's surprised at first, but her expression softens almost immediately. “Hello there. What are you doing up this late?”

“Snooping,” Hana replies, unfazed. “You?”

Illya laughs. “I'm going for an early lap. A bit of exercise each morning is good for the heart, you know.”

“You do this _every_ morning?”

“Yes. Well, when I don't sleep in, which is usually,” Illya says, muttering the last part.

“Mind some company? I'm not doing anything at the moment, and I could use some fresh air.”

Illya smiles, amused. “Company sounds wonderful. That is, if you can keep up.”

With one smooth and graceful movement, Illya's body structure rearranges and morphs into that of a giant eagle. The animal is indistinguishable from a typical eagle, apart from the unusual size, the piercing blue eyes, and the shocks of ruffled silver plumage down both sides of its wings. The Illya-eagle tilts her head, as if urging Hana to come along.

Cluing in, Hana quickly casts a spell, summoning a nine foot long hippogriff – a half horse, half eagle creature with front talons instead of hooves, a proud, beaked visage, and two fluttering feathered wings, spread out to either side. Hana's confidence quickly washes away as she struggles to find a way up onto the creature, who thankfully bends down to a reasonable height for Hana to pull herself up. She adjusts on its back, with nary a saddle or stirrup to support her, feeling a bit unsteady.

As soon as Hana looks relatively secure, Illya pushes off from the ground with a powerful blast from her wings. She ascends, soaring effortlessly into the sky.

“Uhh, giddy-up?” Hana says, unsure. It's enough, and the hippogriff takes to the air with a bit of a galloping start, keeping pace just fine with Illya.

They climb higher and higher into the misty air, over the buildings, over the trees. Moisture from the low, rolling mist seeps into her clothes, dampening them. The stars are still out, and Hana relies on their light, reflected off the shining plumage of Illya's eagle form, to guide the way. Illya seems to be soaring in the direction of a tall, abandoned tower in the distance, eastward from their house on the other side of the city, south of the wizards tower that Illya and her friends had scaled only a short time ago. Not wanting to be left behind, she grips her hippogriff harder and holds on for dear life.

They fly for a little over an hour, eventually reaching the dilapidated tower. Illya touches down onto the roof and transforms back into her sylvan shape. Hana dispels her hippogriff with a wave. The roof of the tower is slanted with thick, loose shingles. Most of them skitter off when they're prodded or given any slight provocation. Nevertheless, both of them find a place to sit down. Illya, perspiring slightly from the physical exertion of her flight, takes a drink from her canteen before offering it to Hana. “Want some water?” Illya asks. Feeling a bit guilty that she hadn't done any exercise herself, Hana politely declines.

The two of them sit in silence for a few minutes, looking westward, out into the landscape around them. The mist had cleared up over the course of their flight, and the visibility is perfectly clear now. Both of them can make out the tiny houses and walled-off district divisions of Dragmiria, the city sprawling for miles onward and outward. Most of the city is made of squat, low buildings, but every so often a building rises up four or five stories, especially in the richer districts. Some of these are prestigious inns, and some are simply watchtowers for the esteemed city guard. With binoculars, they might even be able to make out the few early risers, looking to start another day of business and open their shops for the people of the city.

And yet, despite all these intricacies, their eyes always keep wandering back to the tower in the center of the city, spearing upward and upward inexorably into the sky, punching a hole in the clouds themselves. It fills both of them with a sense of wonder and unease, the surreal image of the tower never completely losing its novelty for the two of them.

“The sunrise from up here is amazing,” Illya says suddenly, pointing off in the opposite direction of the tower, towards the eastern mountain range at the edge of the kingdom Dragmire. Both of them spin around, turning their gaze away from the city. Their vantage point rises above the mountains, allowing them to see the perfectly flat horizon of the ocean. Somewhere, even farther beyond, lies the continent of Moorwish.

“Yeah, I bet,” Hana says, just content being where she is, in this silent calm of the quiet morning, nothing but the occasional sound of the wind blowing in her ears.

“The sun will be up soon. I love watching it from somewhere high up like this. Usually I do it alone, but having company is a refreshing change.”

“Do you do this often?” Hana asks, not sure what to say.

Illya laughs. “Not as often as I should. It takes a while to get here and back. Some days, I would rather sleep in to save my energy to keep those troublemakers in line.” She gestures behind her in the general direction of Emile's inn, much too far to be seen by the naked eye at this distance.

A quiet pause settles between them. Hana breaks it. “Thanks for bringing me up here, Illya. This is nice.”

“When you don't know what the future holds, it's best to enjoy the little things while you still have them,” Illya says, as if reciting some practiced adage. “This is all new to me, you know. I never used to be able to do things like this.”

“Oh no?” Hana asks. “You seem so independent though. Capable. You couldn't do stuff like this at home?”

“Well, I would have to sneak off to do anything remotely like this. And I had servants to watch me. I had to be quite sneaky to get away with an excursion like this and be back before sunrise. Being in a rich family has its drawbacks, you know? Not that I don't appreciate the opportunities it has given me. But people always need to know where you are and what you're doing. It's so stuffy.”

Hana nods. “Yeah, I understand that. My family has money, too. But I wasn't very athletic, so I didn't mind much. Preferred books and stories to all that. I think my parents actually  _wanted _ me to be more outdoorsy, honestly.”

“That sounds nice,” Illya says. “My family is more concerned with keeping up with appearances. Prestige, honor. This is all new for me.” Illya gestures to the gorgeous view. “I could _never_ do something like this whenever I wanted, even a few months ago. Now, I can go where I want, do what I want, stay where I want, eat what I want. All the time! It's amazing.”

Just then, orange sunlight breaks over the water. Illya and Hana both look on as the dark ocean takes on that same streak of orange, like a and call and response between the heavens and earth. Dark purples fade into blues in the sky above the reddish light bursting into view. The clouds break up the rays of sunlight, filtering the sky into shafts of luminous streaks, like the outstretched fingers of a mighty god. As the sun rises over the next twenty minutes, the mountains, too dark too see, slowly take on color and form, emerging from the blackened outlines of the starlit night. At the end of the hour, the world seems to have undergone a total transformation. From pale darkness to bright greens and blues and browns, everything has come alive, new and fresh once more.

Illya stands and walks toward the very edge of the tower's roof, swaying very slightly as the wind pushes her to and fro. She sticks a hand out, feeling the wind, and turns to Hana, stretching that same hand towards her.

Hana gets up and takes a few careful steps towards her, trying her best not to lose her footing in the dilapidated surface of the roof tiles.

“Catch me.” Illya smiles and falls backwards over the side, disappearing.

Hana gasps, sprinting her way down to the tower's edge. She slips, her butt skidding down the angled rooftop and launching her headfirst off the tower. She tries to catch herself, but the building provides no handholds to save her.

Frantically, Hana looks around and spots Illya fifteen feet directly below, falling as fast as her, downward and downward, her eyes closed. Illya's face is the picture of serenity as she hurtles down the side of the tower, five, then ten stories down, rushing faster and faster still. Hana calls out, but she can't even hear the sound of her own voice with the wind rushing in her ears. She tries to ready a spell, but she can't concentrate to cast it. Her mind is a whirlwind, and the rational part of her sits in the middle of it all, thinking “oh gods, this is how I die.”

Her mind focuses, and Hana centers herself.  _First, I need to grab Illya_ , she thinks.  _Then I can save us both_ . Hana evens out, using her hands to steady her trajectory in the air. The, she bends her body forward, narrowing herself into a missile. She inches closer and closer to Illya, closing the gap. In the peripherals, she can see the ground rushing nearer with every second. She's so close. Hana reaches out a hand, ready to grab hold of her, and then-

Hana is suddenly buffeted by a heavy mass. Getting her bearings, she's shocked to find herself holding onto two handfuls of soft feathers. She's riding on the back of a giant eagle. As she soars through the sky, the eagle's head turns back to look at her, its eye shining like a bright blue gem.

They soar off, gliding gently back towards solid earth. Five feet before they hit the ground, the Illya-eagle coasts just above the ground and transforms back, slowing herself on on unseen breeze. Hana, on the other hand, continues to fly forward, eating dirt about twenty feet away from the cheeky druid.

Illya walks up to a somewhat muddied and grass-stained Hana, offering a hand. “Thanks for the catch. I didn't know if you had it in you,” Illya says with a wink.

Hana takes her hand, wiping the dirt from her cheek. “I'm never going on another ride with you, I swear. I could have died!”

“We could have died plenty of times before today, yet here we are, are we not?”

“Yeah,” Hana says, her anger subsiding. “ I guess we are.”

“And now I know for sure that I can trust you with my life, even at no guarantee of your own.”

“Yeah,” Hana says slowly. “I guess you can.” She takes Illya's hand and stands up, dusting herself off. “Why did you do that in the first place? That was crazy.”

“Honnestly?” Illya says. “Just because.” She smiles and procures a small tumbler cup from her robes and pours a bit of the liquid from her canteen into it. “And by the way, this isn't water.”

She passes the cup to Hana, who looks incredulously at her. She sniffs it. It smells like a very sweet wine.

Illya holds up her own canteen. “To not knowing what the future holds, and being there for it. To a life well lived. To freedom and trust.”

“To freedom and trust,” Hana says back, firmly echoing her words. While Illya takes a drink from her canteen, Hana pours her beverage on the ground. Illya doesn't notice. She wipes her mouth and puts the cap back on.

“Well, wanna start heading back?” Illya asks. “I can give you a ride, if you're still feeling a bit shaken.

“No, no, I'm good,” Hana says, starting to summon a mount for herself. “You get a head start, I'll be right there.”

Without another word, Illya transforms once again and takes off into the sky, her silver plumage still shining.

Watching her go, Hana chuckles under her breath. “Freedom and trust...”


	29. Injured

Icarus, the only one at the inn this afternoon, is doing some routine weapon maintenance on his guns. The magical ones don't need much help, but it still comforts him to disassemble them and check them for irregularities. The experimental handcannon gets extra special care; Icarus feels like it's going to blow up in its holster at any moment, and no amount of checking and re-checking it ever completely allays that fear.

He's almost finished when the door to the inn opens and slams shut.

“Emile, are you here?” It's Arel. He sounds a bit panicked, a bit out of breath.

Seconds pass, and there's no response. Emile must be out. Illya, Hana, and Glamour had all stopped by earlier to say they were going on a day trip into the city, and wouldn't be back until dusk.

“Of course, the only time he's not polishing that stupid glass.” There's a high pitched squeaking noise, long and sad. “It's okay Tempest, I'll be okay. Maybe Illya has some potions in her room. Hopefully she doesn't mind?”

Icarus stands up and opens his bedroom door, making his presence known. “Arel, you alright?” He doesn't look alright. A splash of blood covers the front side of his chest, and he's clutching his left arm underneath the billowing fabric of his robes.

“Yeah, I was just fishing in the woods and I got jumped by a couple kobolds. They snuck right up on me.” He repositions his arm with a grunt, not showing the wound directly. “I took care of them, but they got a good hit on me first. They did more damage than I'd thought.”

“Sit down,” Icarus commands. Arel freezes for a second, surprised at the sudden forcefulness, and then leans, sitting, against the wall. Icarus bends down and starts rummaging through the bag of holding. “Keep that arm elevated, yeah? Don't need you bleeding out on the floor.”

Both of them are silent as Icarus takes out a small leather pouch filled with bandages, salves, and small cloths. He motions for Arel to show him his arm, which he does reluctantly. His right hand is slick with quickly drying blood. His upper left arm is slashed quite deep, and the wound still hasn't been able to close up properly.

“Well, it missed the brachial artery, so you're not going to die,” Icarus mutters to himself. He takes out a cloth, wetting it with some water from a canteen, and begins wiping the arm. Mostly clean, but still bleeding, he takes Arel's hand and puts the cloth in it. “Apply pressure to it. Try not to make too much of a mess.” Arel nods and brings the cloth up, squeezing tight. It hurts a bit, but he keeps the pressure on.

Procuring another cloth, Icarus uncorks a bottle of strong smelling liquid and pours some into it. “Gotta disinfect the wound. Whatever weapons those kobolds used, I'm sure they didn't keep them clean. This is gonna sting a bit, yeah?” Icarus brings the cloth up and presses it into Arel's arm. Arel lets out a small grunt, gritting his teeth. The alcohol bites into the wound, almost as bad as the dagger did.

Tempest hisses at Icarus. Icarus laughs. “Almost done, don't worry.” He pulls out a roll of bandages and starts wrapping them around his arm. Tightly, but not painfully so.

“Sorry,” Arel says, quiet. His eyes haven't left the floor this whole time.

“What are ya saying sorry for? Shit happens. Just thank your stars you're still here to tell the tale.”

“I don't mean to be so much trouble, that's all.”

Icarus ties off the bandage with a tight pull, causing Arel to flinch. “Hey, you're not trouble. _I'm_ trouble. That's my job around here, and I can't have you taking it.”

“I mean, I should have brought a potion or some bandages or something. I could have been really hurt, just for something stupid. I wasn't paying attention. I should have-”

“Hey,” Icarus says sharply, quieting Arel immediately. “That doesn't matter. What matters is you're here now, and you're safe. You took a hit, but you won the fight. Can't say the same about the things that attacked you, can you? What are they like right now? Roasted? Fried to a crisp? No, wait, maybe they're stuck with a thousand magical daggers, or skewered with spears of ice?”

Neither of them says anything for while. Tempest sticks her head out of her robes and nuzzles Arel, squeaking happily.

Arel pokes at his new bandage, inspecting it.“I don't have any healing magic like Illya, and I can't defend myself at close range like Glamour does. I can't even summon something to help me, like Hana. And you just-”

“Don't compare yourself to me. I've been on my own for a while. And it sucks, don't get me wrong. But I've needed to learn how to take care of myself. I didn't know how to bind a wound, but I learned. I had to, because if I didn't, I'd die. I didn't have healing magic out on the road by myself, but I had bandages, and I used them.”

Arel seems to sink deeper onto the floor.

“You know why I don't like magic?” Icarus asks. Arel looks up at him for the first time. “I'll tell you. But don't tell the others.” Arel nods.

“I don't like magic because I don't understand it. I don't think anyone really can. It's finicky. You get filled with these grand ideas that you control this unlimited cosmic power. But then, there's a knife in your stomach, and all your knowledge goes out the window, and the world closes in on you. When we're in a pinch, we can just get Illya to heal us. But if she takes off for a few hours, suddenly we're mortal again. Life and death balances on the edge of a knife, and a healing kit is the only thing that stops you from toppling over to the wrong side. Rely on magic, and your life is always at the mercy of some other power, some borrowed strength.”

“What about your guns?” Arel asks. “They jam all the time. Seems like the same thing.”

Icarus twirls his seraphic pistol. “Yeah, you're a little bit right. But that's why I bring a backup,” he says, unholstering his demonic pistol. “And another,” he says, gesturing to the experimental handcannon on the table in his room. “I can clear my guns pretty quick too, in a pinch. And if that fails, I've still got a sword. Blades don't need reloading. And if that doesn't work,” Icarus spreads his wings out. “I can usually just fly away.”

“So my power is unreliable? That's what you're saying?”

“Hey now, don't sell yourself that short,” Icarus says, holstering his guns.” You can do things I can't. Crazy things. Things I don't want to go near with a ten foot pole. You're smart, and level-headed, and good with people. All that stuff has kept us alive and well until now. You might not know how to bandage a wound, but _I do_.” Icarus offers his hand to Arel. “And my strength is your strength. Don't forget that.”

Arel smiles and takes his hand. Icarus pulls the unexpectedly light elf to his feet, who stumbles a bit.

Raising his guns in the air to either side of him, Icarus smiles. “Now let's make sure those gods-damned kobolds know that if they mess with you, they mess with  _me_ .” With a running kick, he pushes open the front door and flies out, yelling incomprehensibly.

Arel, a bit shocked, looks to Tempest on his shoulder. She gives the otter equivalent of a shrug. Arel sighs. “Well, let's make sure  _he_ doesn't die, I guess?” He runs out of the inn, chasing after the reckless gunslinger.


	30. Catch

_Thock, thock, thock._

“What the hell is that noise?” Icarus mutters to himself. He'd been trying to read the same sentence in his book for the last twenty minutes. Whatever the noise was, it was small and constant, and extremely annoying.

In a huff, Icarus dog ears the page, slams his book down, and stomps outside the inn. He looks around, seeing nothing, but then he hears that  _thock_ noise from behind him. 

He circles around the building, and is nearly struck with a crossbow bolt, having to jump back to narrowly avoid it. “Hey! What the hell is going on here?”

Glamour has his back up against the broad side of Emile's inn, a pile of rounded wooden shafts littered all around him. Forty feet away, Arel holds a crossbow, looking a little embarrassed. “Sorry Icarus,” he shouts out. “Didn't see you there. You alright?”

Hana, standing off to the side next to Illya, waves her hand. “It's fine. Those things would only leave a bruise, at worst. By the way, thanks for whipping them up for us, Illya. I didn't know you could shape wood like that.”

“Well, if I can help my friends try new things, who am I to say no? Plus, I'd love to see Glamour catch even one.”

“Right?” Hana agrees. “I'm invested now.”

“Just a few more, I think I've almost got it,” Glamour protests.

“Will _somebody_ please explain why I was almost shot?” Icarus yells desperately

Arel strings his crossbow on his belt, walking over to Glamour to help him pick up the scattered bolts. Instead of being tipped with sharp metal, as bolts typically are, Icarus notices that these ones are blunt on one end. Like Hana said, even if somebody got hit with one of these, it wouldn't be enough to injure them badly.

“I guess Hana, Illya, and Glamour caught a group of performers while they were passing through town yesterday,” Arel explains.

“Yeah!” Glamour interjects. “They were like, ninjas or monks or something. They had these big flowy robes and they looked super cool. One of their acts was like, they'd shoot arrows at one of them, and they'd be like, bam, bam, bam, and catch all of them right out of the air.” Glamour mimes the motions, as if catching them himself with fast, whipping motions. “And I'm like, 'hey, I could probably do that', so now we're practicing.”

“What about you two?” Icarus asks Hana and Illya. “You don't want to try your hand at this ninja shit?”

Hana and Illya laugh. “No, that's alright,” Illya says with a smile.

“Yeah, we're good. Show 'em, Arel.”

Arel loads a practice crossbow bolt and fires it in Hana's direction. The projectile is heading straight for her, but Hana waves her hand, and the bolt seems to magically veer off at the last second, almost clipping her ear.

“Huh, that's a neat trick. And you, Illya?”

Arel launches another half-hearted bolt at the druid. She makes a wide arm motion, and a sudden gust of wind sends the attack uselessly flying away from her.

“That's not half as cool as what we saw at the show, though,” Glamour says. “They could like, catch it and _then_ throw it back and hit a bullseye on the other end of the street. How awesome is that?”

“So, now Arel is shooting a bunch of arrows at you until you get it right?”

“Hey,” Arel says, picking up the last of the practice bolts and heading back to his shooting position. “There's only one way to get better at something, and it's practice. Besides, it's not like he's going to get hurt.”

“_Exactly_,” Icarus says, smiling intently. “Without the rush of fear, the rush of _real_ danger, you're never gonna be able to do this.”

Glamour huffs. “Well I'm not going to learn it right away. We've only been trying for about an hour.”

“Yeah, and how many have you caught so far?” Icarus stares Glamour down. Glamour doesn't answer. “That's what I thought.”

Icarus steps in to where Glamour has been standing, gently brushing him aside. “Listen, if you want to _really_ learn this, you have to up the stakes a little. You gotta get your adrenaline pumping. Feel the rush of real battle.”

Glamour is getting into it, but is hesitant to show it and prove Icarus right. “Okay, what's the plan?”

“Arel,” Icarus grunts, startling him. “Load a crossbow bolt. A _real_ one. It's all or nothing.”

“Icarus, I'm not going to shoot you,” Arel says flatly.

“No, no. Do it. I want to see this,” Glamour says, not taking his eyes off Icarus. The wyvaran has now adopted a ready stance, arms outstretched, attention hyper-focused on Arel's crossbow.

Incredulous, Arel looks over to Hana and Illya for feedback. Illya shrugs. Hana has already procured a bag of popcorn from somewhere. Arel drops his head and takes a steel tipped bolt from his bag. “I hope you know what you're doing.”

“No clue,” says quietly, a deranged grin plastered across his reptilian face.

Arel draws back the string, locking it into place and loading the bolt. “I can't believe I'm doing this.” He begins taking aim, but hesitates. Arel looks around at the others, who egg him on silently. Reluctantly, he points his weapon at Icarus, whose eyes are now closed, his arms up in a pose resembling some vague form of martial arts.

“One, two-”

“No!” Icarus yells. “No counting. I need to feel the wind on the my cheek, the sound of the bolt whipping through the air. An attacker would never announce their intent to strike. This has to feel like a real battle. Only then can you truly test your mettle.”

Glamour is getting visibly pumped up. The others look on with silent anticipation.

A few tense seconds pass. Time slows to a crawl. In this emulation of battle frenzy, Icarus's senses heighten. He can hear the rustle of every blade of grass below him. Nearby, he can individually make out each of his friends' breathing. Though his eyes are closed, he can visualize the exact location of each one of his fingertips. He imagines them shining in the inside of his blacked vision, as if painting a dark canvas with a sky of glowing, cascading stars. His whole body follows, an avatar of visualized light represented in his mind's eye.

_Click._

_Whoosh._

Icarus reacts instantly, moving his hands up to intercept the bolt. Whether on purpose or by a nervous slip, Arel had fired it straight for his head. Either way, Icarus traces the path it takes through the air with his eyes still closed, intuiting the trajectory down to the millimeter. His right hand shoots up and feels the rough, unsanded wood of the bolt's shaft. He clutches it, gripping it tightly.

Stock still, still holding the bolt, Icarus opens his eyes. The others all share an identical expression of disbelief.

Icarus smiles. “And that's how it's done.” He goes to move his hand with the crossbow bolt still in it, and finds some resistance. He pulls, but the arrow doesn't budge.

“Oh wow, you were like, three seconds late on that,” Glamour says, wanting to laugh, but clearly concerned for Icarus's health. “Good try though.”

A trickle of warm blood runs down Icarus's face. He removes his hand from the bolt, which stays in place, having firmly dug itself into Icarus's upper left forehead.

“Oh no.” Icarus's vision goes white, and he falls over, unconscious.

As Illya rushes over to heal him, swearing under her breath, Hana suddenly cheers and hollers, spilling some of her popcorn. Arel puts his head in his hands.

“You gotta admit, that was pretty great,” Glamour says, nudging Arel. Arel looks at him, lips pursed. He wordlessly hands him the crossbow and walks away. Glamour calls after him. “Same time tomorrow, right?”


	31. Ripe

“Wake up, wake up! We don't have much time!”

Icarus awakens with a snort as Illya shakes him to consciousness. Bleary-eyed, he grabs his gun off the nightstand beside him, grumbling. “What do I have to kill?”

“Put the gun down and just come outside, please. You're going to miss it!” Without checking to see if he'd go back to bed or not, Illya runs out of the room to wake the others.

Icarus sits up in his bed, stumbling up and into the common area, where he almost runs into Glamour. The vampire boy doesn't even look awake, more like sleepwalking.

“Guys!” Arel shouts from outside, already following Illya's orders. “You're going to want to see this!”

Icarus grabs Glamour by the wrist as he mumbles in his sleep - _No, mom, I already told you I'm too cool for school_ \- and drags him outside. He looks over his shoulder to see Illya scooting a slightly cranky Hana out of bed.

As soon as he opens the door, the reason for the early awakening becomes apparent. Blue light washes over them in the early darkness, the moon still shining brightly above through scattered clouds. The very ground beneath them seems to pulse and move with light, rippling like an aurora borealis, like the waves of sunlight reflecting off the bottom of a pool. Stopped in his tracks by the door, Illya and Hana come rushing through, causing them to stumble forward into Arel, who hasn't made it much farther. All of them advance of the source of light.

The tree. It had been planted almost two weeks ago and yet it now stands tall, as if it had lived a long life of years and decades. Its wide trunk and generous canopy of leaves give no indication of the tiny sapling it once had been only a handful days prior to tonight. Lines of light crisscross up through it like veins, spreading down into the ground and up through the leaves, running like blue fire, like rivers of molten sapphire, like phosphorescent blood.

Illya pushes past them. “You said there would be fruit in this tree if we were lucky, right Arel?” She rummages around in the leaves, carrying herself on the wind to float up and dig through them. After a minute of searching, she comes down with only one fruit, looking a bit deflated. “This is all I could find.”

“No, that's great that one grew at all,” Hana says smiling. “It's a real unozei fruit, just like the book said. I'm surprised. I didn't think we'd be so lucky to see one of these.”

“We're not going to eat it, are we?” Arel says.

Icarus grumbles, wiping the dust from his eyes. “You drag us out here in the middle of the night for no reason? You better believe we're gonna eat whatever this is.”

Eyes full of wonder now, Glamour takes in the full spectacle of the tree. “Yeah, I want to eat the glowy fruit,” he says, not taking his eyes off the shimmering energies of the tree for even a second.

Illya passes the unozei fruit to Arel to inspect it. It's about the size and shape of a pomegranate, but bright blue, and faintly pulsing with the same energy flowing around them. It feels a bit heavier than it should. Cautiously, he procures a small knife and cuts the fruit in half cleanly, opening the two halves like a book.

Although the outside is blue and glows faintly, the inside flesh is the shape of a yellow star, filled in with green at the edges between the five points. The fruit glows like bright candlelight, almost painful to look at. Everybody winces a little bit as the fruit drives away the darkness around them, except Glamour, who stares directly into the shining fruit, the star shape burning into his retinas.

Illya's enthusiasm dulls, erring on the side of caution. “Is this really safe to eat? Whatever this is, it seems magically powerful.”

“I'm not gonna back down to a challenge from a fruit.” Icarus says, now fully awake. “Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.”

“That's untrue, but I very much want to try this,” Hana says candidly. “If Arel and I did our reading correctly, it should be fine to eat. Better than fine, actually.”

Arel stares at the fruit in his hands, and then back up to the rest of his friends, all looking up at him with anticipation. Smiling, he hands one of the halves to Illya, starting to cut up his own. Illya follows, and soon they've divided the fruit into six pieces, each cutting their pieces into thirds.

“One for each of us, plus Emile,” Arel says, wiping his knife and putting it away.

Each of them takes their slices in their hands, setting Emile's down for the moment. They look like glowing star fragments, shining in the darkness. Arel, Illya, Hana, Glamour, and Icarus gather around in a semi-circle in front of the pulsing blue light of the tree, breathing heavily, nobody sure who should take the first bite.

Icarus is about to, but Arel puts up his hand. “Wait. This seems like a special moment. Doesn't it? When was the last time something like this happened to anybody? Another tree like this one might not sprout for a hundred years, maybe a thousand. Maybe not ever. This could be the last time this fruit is ever tasted.”

“Yes, I agree,” Illya says. She raises her fruit slice like a General raises a sword to commence a decisive battle. “To the bonds that we share, under this moonlight.”

Icarus is next to raise his, confidently. “To the destiny that we forge with our own hands.”

Glamour smiles and joins in. “To friendship, and following your dreams.”

Hana laughs. “That's pretty cheesy.”

“Come on, I just came up with it like two seconds ago!”

Arel sets his eyes on Glamour, who luckily doesn't notice how accidentally intense the stare is, and raises his piece. “To freedom, and becoming the best versions of ourselves that we can be.”

Finally, Hana raises her slice, meeting the other four in the middle. “To the good fortune that brightens the way to dawn.”

In unison, they all bite down on their pieces. Their eyes go wide all at once.

Several seconds pass in silence.

“Did... did anybody else feel that?” Arel asks.

Illya nods. “You all felt something too?”

Icarus chews slowly, swallowing. “Yeah. I was- I was on the Shattered Moon, sailing the Eastern Sea. It was just me and Abbey, under the stars. Except, I was older, I think. Like a memory, but not. I don't remember a night like that.”

“I was sparring with my brother,” Illya says, staring with purpose at the ground. “We never did that. When he wasn't off somewhere, he always told me that I was decades away from getting to his level. But just now, it felt like we were equals, like he respected me.” She wipes her mouth, the juice dripping. “Like you said, it was like a distant memory that never happened.”

“I was with my mom,” Glamour says flatly. Everyone is silent. “She was baking cookies. Arel was there too. She hugged him, and he smiled.” Glamour takes another bite of his fruit.

“I was somewhere else,” Arel says. Glamour looks up at him, like a lost puppy. “A city underwater. I've never seen it before, not even in pictures. I don't know where I would have gotten the idea. But there were people I know there. Knew, I mean. In the dream. I don't know who they are. But it _felt_ like I did.” Arel stares at the half-eaten slice of glowing fruit in his hand. “It really felt like it,” he whispers.

Hana takes another bite of her fruit. And then another big bite, finishing it off. The rind rolls from her hand, onto the ground.

Hana sniffles, and she quickly brings a sleeve up to her face.

“Oh, honey,” Illya says, wrapping Hana up in a big hug as fast as she can, the rest of her fruit falling to the ground. Glamour grabs Arel and adds them both to the hug pile. Even Icarus, still wistful from his sudden vision, joins in. They all squeeze tightly, warming themselves under the cold night

As they embrace, the light of the tree grows brighter, brighter than it's been this whole time. As they all turn to look, the hug disperses, everyone now cautiously staring at the tree. It pulses strongly, the roots underneath them causing the very earth underneath them to glow. Undulating, beating faster like the heart of a living thing, the momentum rises, the intervals growing shorter, the light growing brighter. Just as it seems like the light is almost daylight, and the flashing is nearly tuned to a steady glow, the tension breaks, and the tree dissolves into a million tiny flecks of light. The motes float up, spiraling like a swarm of lighting bugs, like an army of paper lanterns alight with mystical flame. They take to the breeze, swirling and melting into the air, joining the flow of the arcane magic that runs through every living being, no matter how small. Their half eaten fruit coast away as well, breaking into fragments of light and releasing themselves to the wind. Emile's slice, still whole and uneaten, remains.

Each of them, these five heroes from unlikely corners of the world, brought together for some unknown purpose that they all share, gifted with cunning, strength, magical prowess, and an indefatigable will, all feel very small under the weight of the world that spirals and breaks above them. They feel blessed, and very lucky to have met one another. Independently, but simultaneously, all of them think to themselves that they would give up their lives to keep each other safe. They are a family, no matter what.

As the light fades into the dark of the night, they begin to move again, pointedly aware of the base, corporeal nature of their bodies, so fleeting.

“That fruit was pretty good though, right?” Icarus says to nobody in particular.

“So good!” Glamour shouts. “Like cotton candy but smoother. Like cotton candy _juice_.”

Illya laughs. “Perhaps we can try to find some cotton candy seeds to plant next.”

“Really?”

“Come on, Illya, don't get his hopes up,” Arel says. “Now he's just gonna keep asking for it.”

As the boys start to head back inside, Illya turns to Hana, still looking up at the sky. She takes her hand. “Listen,” Illya starts in a soft voice. “Whatever you saw, you don't need to talk about it. We know you have a complicated past. And a complicated future? Heck, all of us have a pretty complicated present, I think. But we're in this together. You can rely on us if you need to. Don't forget that.”

Hana doesn't respond. She turns to Illya as if seeing her for the first time. With some effort, the flicker of a smile comes to her lips, but it wavers.

Illya gives her another big hug. They breathe into the crooks of each other necks for a few long moments, the night air still fresh. Hana steps back, and she gives Illya more genuine smile. Illya returns it, knowing that things are a little bit better, even if they aren't entirely okay. Things can't always be entirely okay. That's life.

“I'll see you in the morning, yeah?” Illya says, stepping toward the inn door. “Don't stay out too long. I don't want you to catch a cold.” And with that, she disappears, leaving Hana by herself, a little better than she had been moments ago.

Hana looks up at the place where the dancing lights had been, trying to see them once more, trying to will them to come back and brighten up the sky for a few more moments.

Nothing. That's what she'd seen. She hadn't seen anything when she'd eaten the fruit. That scared her more than she can tell.

Hana eyes the last slice of the unozei fruit on the ground, still intact, left for Emile. She picks it up, and takes a big bite out of it, devouring the whole thing, the golden light disappearing into her mouth.

Nothing.

It tastes like nothing.


End file.
